Do you work in industry?

wills135

Hi,

Could you please tell me what a typical day in industry entails?

Can I assume there are two types of roles - financial and management?

Thanks

David Ballantyne

For an AAT student, full or fellow member, a job in industry could include one or both of the above or more depending on the size and type of organisation they work for.

In a very small organisation they could be responsible for bookkeeping, payroll, VAT, control account reconciliations, credit control, management accounts, budgeting and forecasting and even statutory accounts production. They may also be responsible for a member of staff. In this scenario, they would most likely report directly to the managing director/general manager/chief executive. Type of sector could be manufacturing, service industry or charity.

In a medium sized organisation, they could be responsible for any combination of the above activities although a chartered level accountant is more likely to have responsibility for management accounts, budgeting and forecasting and statutory accounts and for team management. Types of sector would also be as above.

In a large organisation, it is more likely that they would specialise in a particular area of work, payroll, or management accounting for a certain range of cost centres (this would include budgeting and forecasting and control account reconciliations), or maintaining the sales ledger and carrying out credit control, or capital asset accounting or cashbook. In this situation they could find themselves being a member of a team within a larger accounting department, possibly supervising one or two staff. This would include the above types of organisation, but also public sector bodies such as the NHS or local authorities. In this type of organisation, they would report to a chartered level accountant (or possibly a part qualified chartered level student) who in turn would report to a more senior chartered level accountant who then reports to a finance director.

All these scenarios are real. I have worked in all of these types of scenario.

wills135

Thank you for your reply.

How much of an importance is tax knowledge in industry? As I'm aiming to gain employment within industry would you say that my time is better spent further studying budgeting, cost analysis, and such, rather than any more time spent researching tax?

Rightly or wrongly, is my assumption true that industry is financial standards mixed with management accounts, and practice is financial statements and tax?

One final question -

Are there any statistics on the amount of folk employed within industry V folk employed within practice?

I'm just trying to gauge which offers, on a numbers level, the highest proportional chance of any future employment.

Thank you very much.

David Ballantyne

Regarding tax, it would be good to have a working knowledge of VAT and payroll for industry. These taxes are commonly dealt with by AAT qualified accountants in industry, again depending on the size of the organisation. It is unlikely that an AAT qualified accountant in industry would deal with personal tax, property tax, capital gains or corporation tax.

Very broadly speaking you are right to say that industry is financial standards mixed with management accounts and practice is financial statements and tax. I would refer you back to my previous post. It would be slightly more precise to say that the main emphasis in industry is management accounting and the main emphasis in practice is tax. Financial standards and financial statements are applied/prepared in both industry and practice.

On a quick search of Google I can't find any statistics that will directly answer your question although this analysis of the profession at chartered level may be of interest "FRC Key Facts and Trends in the Accountancy Profession".

The only way I can think of answering your question about where the highest proportional change of any future employment is, is to do some research on Reed Jobs or Total Jobs for your local area. Just enter "Accountant" in the search box and then analyse how many are practice and how many are non-practice.

Neillaw

I do both, I've worked in practice and have my own practice and I've worked in industry.

It's more like a typical month in industry, dependant on the size of the business as a small business will be a jack of all trades type of position while medium sized businesses will be first couple of weeks will be management accounts and then the next will be covered by issues raised in the accounts or project work.

Management accounts are driver driven as against financial stat accounts.

You should keep abreast of tax issues such as AIA etc but you won't see much capital gains or income tax issues unless it belongs to Payroll.