[hutchinson29]

I will be graduating in the spring of 2015 and I am wondering how much GPA matters for accounts receivable, accounts payable, and cash rec. type of positions. It looks like a lot of those only require an associates degree. I will be getting my bachelors with about 150 credits. Obviously I would eventually like to move up from a position like that but I only have a 2.6 GPA (2.9 accounting) (C’s in core classes not related to business or accounting). I work a lot of hours which definitely hinders the amount of time I am able to put into school. I wake up at 6am everyday and pretty much do my Peachtree homework all day long to get it done on time in between work and then barely have time to study for intermediate or tax. I go into some of the intermediate tests blind and get about the class average because I have a fairly good understanding of the normal balances and the basics which essentially is the most important in my humble opinion. I will probably end up getting a C in intermediate II this semester though because it is much harder than intermediate I. I don’t think anyone leaves college knowing all the parts of the pension worksheet even if they got an A in the class. A person with a C that understands how accounting works is able to apply their education more than someone who just memorized the journal entries and the pension worksheet without actually understanding the material. I have experience with petty cash, payables and receivables, month-end close reconciliations, other reconciliations, advanced excel, and my boss told me I will be reconciling bank statements soon. I’m completely revamping the excel spreadsheets at a different small business and making their invoices simpler and easier to use. We were wasting time inputting data into 7 different spreadsheets when I first started working there and now we put it into 2. The boss had us emailing her files every night because she wanted to have them in an email for backup in case the computer crashed. I made them start using Google Drive for that and I made them start scanning the checks and organizing them by month in folders because there was incomplete data on some of the invoices and we needed records for the checks. My first few years of college I was involved in athletics and probably didn’t take school as seriously as I should have and I wasn’t an accounting major at the time either. With a lot of the classes I felt like I would have been ‘stepping on the gas with my tires in the mud’ when it came to learning. I felt like if I put in the work to get an A in biology and and business management, which is a common sense class, that I would have just been memorizing things that don’t have real world practicality. When I switched to accounting, I decided to stop playing hockey at the school because it took up 20 hours per week and then weekend travel on top of that, and decided to work more and get off my parents bills. That was my own choice no one made me do it. Now essentially I have less time than when I was involved in athletics because I switched majors late and have been taking 3/4 accounting courses per semester and have been working a lot. Speed is definitely my crutch as well. I do not need to review the information lots of times to understand it but it takes me a little longer than most people to get through the information even just one time. I don’t think my GPA is a result of my lack of work ethic, in fact I think its because I am maybe too ambitious and put myself in situations that make things difficult. So basically, for those kind of positions will they even ask for my GPA? I think it would be a great place to start and learn more processes and possibly move up in a company. Public accounting is unrealistic with my GPA. I plan on getting my CPA to advance my career and after that noone will probably ask for my GPA.

[Anonymous]

You'll have a good change of landing an A/R or A/P gig with an Accounting degree. My company has hired people with different combinations of experience/no accounting degree, accounting degree/no experience, etc. for positions in A/R, A/P, and Payroll. Since most J/E's are going to occur within an accounting program a lot of the accounting is automatic on that level. The nice thing about having an accounting background will be your ability to go above and beyond on your daily tasks and get yourself recognized for a promotion earlier! Goodluck.

[Anonymous]

You'll have a good change of landing an A/R or A/P gig with an Accounting degree. My company has hired people with different combinations of experience/no accounting degree, accounting degree/no experience, etc. for positions in A/R, A/P, and Payroll. Since most J/E's are going to occur within an accounting program a lot of the accounting is automatic on that level. The nice thing about having an accounting background will be your ability to go above and beyond on your daily tasks and get yourself recognized for a promotion earlier! Goodluck.

[hutchinson29]

Positions like these

https://www.borderstates.com/content/careers-accounts-receivable-cash-management-sssociate

https://cargill.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=999114&src=JB-11960

Thanks!

[hutchinson29]

Positions like these

https://www.borderstates.com/content/careers-accounts-receivable-cash-management-sssociate

https://cargill.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=999114&src=JB-11960

Thanks!

[mla1169]

You have time to pull your GPA up, give it 100%. You will almost certainly be able to find the types of jobs you mentioned with a low GPA but you limit yourself somewhat. I know very well how challenging it is to burn the candle at both ends but it's worth it in the long run.

FAR- 77
AUD -49, 71, 84
REG -56,75!
BEC -75

Massachusetts CPA (non reporting) since 3/12.

[mla1169]

You have time to pull your GPA up, give it 100%. You will almost certainly be able to find the types of jobs you mentioned with a low GPA but you limit yourself somewhat. I know very well how challenging it is to burn the candle at both ends but it's worth it in the long run.

FAR- 77
AUD -49, 71, 84
REG -56,75!
BEC -75

Massachusetts CPA (non reporting) since 3/12.

[hutchinson29]

Well, agreed. It will be worth it in the long run. I actually have a 2.5 overall and 2.7 accounting right now but I gave the GPA's I expect for spring recruiting. It could go as high as a 3.0 accounting and 2.7/8 overall by the time of spring recruiting.

[hutchinson29]

Well, agreed. It will be worth it in the long run. I actually have a 2.5 overall and 2.7 accounting right now but I gave the GPA's I expect for spring recruiting. It could go as high as a 3.0 accounting and 2.7/8 overall by the time of spring recruiting.

[CPA soon]

Getting the first job or internship is always hard, regardless of whether it's AP, AR or whatever. I started in AP and it wasn't even easy to land the internship with a 3.33. It is true that many AP positions do not require a bachelor but they usually require experience so you better make yourself marketable and pull your GPA up. Also depends on the scale of the company you want to join. In my opinion most people that don't start public, start in AP or AR which makes it competitive.

FAR - 71, 68, 74, (8/31/14) 78 ✔
REG - 67, 71, 71, (10/18/14) 78 ✔
BEC - (11/29/14) 86 ✔
AUD - 73, (4/4/15) 86 ✔

I can't believe this is over! 2 years and 3 months..

[CPA soon]

Getting the first job or internship is always hard, regardless of whether it's AP, AR or whatever. I started in AP and it wasn't even easy to land the internship with a 3.33. It is true that many AP positions do not require a bachelor but they usually require experience so you better make yourself marketable and pull your GPA up. Also depends on the scale of the company you want to join. In my opinion most people that don't start public, start in AP or AR which makes it competitive.

FAR - 71, 68, 74, (8/31/14) 78 ✔
REG - 67, 71, 71, (10/18/14) 78 ✔
BEC - (11/29/14) 86 ✔
AUD - 73, (4/4/15) 86 ✔

I can't believe this is over! 2 years and 3 months..

[hutchinson29]

How structured is the recruiting for these kinds of positions? After graduation I would have an extra semester of GPA to put on there, so I might have an easier time then than I would during spring recruiting. How much experience did you have when applying for your first AP position, CPA soon?

[hutchinson29]

How structured is the recruiting for these kinds of positions? After graduation I would have an extra semester of GPA to put on there, so I might have an easier time then than I would during spring recruiting. How much experience did you have when applying for your first AP position, CPA soon?

[How many letters do you need]

First job out of school GPA tends to matter, unless you have some prior experience in an accounting assistant type of role and/or have some connections. I was very similar to you in that I worked alot, took 15-21 credits a semester so my undergrad GPA was quite awful. I was lucky enough to spend my final two years as an accounting assiatant at a tiny training company, learned the ins and outs of accounting on a very small scale. What really did it though, is that I had direct communication with various heads of HR due to the nature of the job. I had three offers coming out and a 2.5 GPA. One could say I've had my fair share of luck, but in reality none of it happened on accident. Your GPA is your obstacle, find a way around it.

MBA,CMA,CPA, CFF?, ABV?

[How many letters do you need]

First job out of school GPA tends to matter, unless you have some prior experience in an accounting assistant type of role and/or have some connections. I was very similar to you in that I worked alot, took 15-21 credits a semester so my undergrad GPA was quite awful. I was lucky enough to spend my final two years as an accounting assiatant at a tiny training company, learned the ins and outs of accounting on a very small scale. What really did it though, is that I had direct communication with various heads of HR due to the nature of the job. I had three offers coming out and a 2.5 GPA. One could say I've had my fair share of luck, but in reality none of it happened on accident. Your GPA is your obstacle, find a way around it.

MBA,CMA,CPA, CFF?, ABV?

[hutchinson29]

Well, below is my experience. What kinds of jobs did you have offers for, How many letters do you need? And did GPA come up in the interview and if so how did you handle it?

Job 1:

• Responsible for bookkeeping in Excel including customer payments and charges, payroll, customer information, and other information as requested by management

• Revamped the company’s entire Excel spreadsheet system by creating well organized and easy to read spreadsheets, inserting formulas, and implementing pivot tables and data validation lists

• Payroll duties included revamping a payroll spreadsheet and implementing a new timesheet system as well as calculating all withholding

• Revamped the company’s excel invoices and statements

• Implemented a payment log in excel to record all payments that get transferred to invoices

• Played a central role in various business practices including determining the locations of customers to decide if the company should expand to a new location and the implementation of Google Drive as a means of backing up files

• Created new folders and paths within Google Drive to create ease in finding files

• Implemented the scanning of daily checks and folder paths to store the checks by month

• Assist customers in person and on the phone in recording payments and answering questions

Job 2:

• Assist the staff accountants with various finance functions including basic bookkeeping, payables and receivables, balancing petty cash accounts, customer payments, past due collection attempts, health insurance deductions, monthly reconciliations, and other account reconciliations

• Reconciliations include an audit of journal entries in the payment software system as well as importing data into Excel and using the find function to find transactions, dividing unreconciled amounts by the amount of common transactions, reviewing the daily financial reports, examining bank statements, referencing the chart of accounts, comparing data from multiple systems, correcting formulas in Excel, and other means suitable for reconciling the accounts

• Reference the chart of accounts when inputting and auditing journal entries not only for the account numbers but also for other numbers related to the transactions

• Open mail to record payments via check, scan checks and file appropriately, and receive petty cash information with receipts to input into Excel

• Assist the staff accountants with miscellaneous projects including calculating reimbursement costs for employees with missing receipts, information updates to submit to other departments, and other miscellaneous projects

• Revamped a record of expenditures spreadsheet to calculate expenditures for an entire summer by including circular formulas from spreadsheet to spreadsheet, data validation lists, and if formulas

• Use Excel, Word and Outlook to facilitate office communication including innovation to the systems

• Leave comments in Excel to communicate information to the staff accountants

• Set-up rules in Outlook to automatically move emails from certain senders to specific folders

• Respond to voicemails, emails, and phone calls to assist customers

My boss at job 2 also said that I will be reconciling bank statements in May

Activities

Men’s Varsity Ice Hockey 2010 – 2013 / 3 Seasons

• Member of the 2010 – 2011 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference playoff runner-ups

• Practiced 20+ hours per week in addition to weekend travel while managing a full course load and completing a double major

Accounting Club October 2013 – Present / 0 Years, 7 Months

• Participation at various meetings

Thank you all, very much.

[Author]

Replies