An accountant’s task involves working to ensure that companies and individuals are keeping excellent records and paying taxes effectively and on time.

Although the accountants job description for some accounting positions might be basic, other accountant job descriptions are not quite as clear due to the number of tasks that are required of them.

In general, an accountant carries out essential functions for businesses, along with people, of all types by offering a wide variety of business and accounting services, including public, management and government accounting, as well as internal auditing. These four major fields of accounting, in addition to having a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, each has a separate accounting job description.

1. Public Accountant

An accountant’s job description can be summed up in what most people picture as a “normal” accounting professional’s work. It includes carrying out a broad variety of accounting, auditing, tax, and other activities for their customers, which may be corporations, governments, nonprofit organizations, and individuals. Specialists in public accounting are frequently chosen. For example, a public accountant might choose to concentrate on tax matters, such as encouraging businesses about the tax advantages and drawbacks of particular business decisions and preparing individual tax returns. Other accountants could select areas such as settlement or employee healthcare advantages, or could create accounting and data processing systems. Still other accountants could decide to specialize in auditing monetary statements and notify investors and authorities that statements have been correctly prepared and reported. Public accountants are Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) and have their own companies or work for public accounting companies.

2. Management Accountant

Another accounting professional job description is that of the management accountant. Also called an expense, managerial, industrial, corporate, or personal accountant, management accountants record and analyze the monetary details of the business for which they work. The management accounting professional’s job description includes a comprehensive listing of obligations, such as budgeting, performance assessment, cost management, and asset management. Management accounting professionals are typically a part of executive teams involved in strategic planning or the development of brand-new products, where they analyze and translate monetary information that corporate executives require in order to make sound business decisions. They also prepare monetary reports for other groups, consisting of stockholders, lenders, regulative companies, and tax authorities. Management accountants are typically a part of the accounting department, employed by a big business, and could work in many different areas that may include financial evaluation, planning, budgeting, and cost accounting.

3. Government Accounting professional

A government accountant works in the general public sector, keeping and examining the records of government firms and auditing personal businesses and people whose activities are subject to government policy or taxation.

4. Internal Auditor

The accounting professional job description of an internal auditor can be summarized by the job title. Internal auditors confirm the precision of their company’s internal records and check for mismanagement, waste, or scams.

Accounting professionals in all 4 areas can work for a business or can be employed by an accounting company, which would in turn be employed by a company for consulting. An accounting professional can also be self-employed and offer accounting services to people, companies, or both.