Accounting in the Society

Introduction

Accounting is the skill of identifying, recording, summarising, reporting and analysing the financial business transactions. The skill is used to manipulate and simplify the financial data for the presentations designed to the organizations and individuals of the society. Without the use of accounting chaos will arise and businesses, organizations and industries will all fail to operate due to the lack of apropos knowledge relating to the running commerce.

Throughout this report I will be discussing the roles of accounting, categorising the availability of jobs in the accounting field, comparing the annual salaries of accountants, analysing the advantages and disadvantages of computerised accounting and discussing the importance of source documents.

Roles Of Accounting

“The language of business” is what accounting is often called as it provides most of the data and information of which owners, managers and investors need to appraise a company’s financial performance. The main role of accounting is to assist attentive parties, both internal and external, to permit informed business judgments and decisions.

The main functions of accounting are; to provide information for better decision making, assist in discharging accountability and help evaluate performance. Accountants have the responsibility to provide information which is timely correct and accurate and present them to users in a simplified manner. Accountants provide these information in reports which are easy to understand by users outside the accounting profession, reports such as; income statements, balance sheets, statement of cash flows, sales forecasts and ageing analysis of debtors are prepared for businesses. With this information, users are enabled to make informed judgments and decisions in their business.

Jobs Available In Accounting Field

There are many jobs in the accounting field which one can apply for with the help of an accounting degree. Jobs across Australia ranging from accountants, accounting assistants, accounting clerks, accounting managers, accounts payable clerks, accounts receivable clerks, audits, bookkeepers, budget analysts, business services directors, certified internal auditors, chief financial officers, credit officers, commercial analysts, comptrollers, controllers, payroll clerks, payroll administrators, staff accountants, tax accountants and tax managers are all associated with an accounting degree. Jobs in the accounting field will always be abundant due to the economically growing world, hence new businesses opening and thus arising demands for jobs in the accounting field.

Salary

Salaries of accountants have dropped dramatically over the past year and only recently have started to rebound and slowly increase, as seen in Figure 1. As of March 2014 the average salary of an accountant is totaled to $83,263 per annum. Different accounting professions come with varied salaries [appendix 1], ranging from the highest paying management subsector with an average of $112, 809 p.a. to the lowest paying accounts payable subsector comprising an average of $55, 318 p.a..

Computerised Accounting

Computerised accounting is a computer run software which enables information on financial transactions from internal and external parties of both small and large businesses to be recorded, stored and analysed. Towards the end of each accounting period of a business, financial reports are automatically generated by the computer. The computerised accounting eliminates paper work making it easier, faster and more efficient to collect store and trail all transactions as they occur.

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