[Jriver]

I read the duties of a senior accountant role and it seemed like staff level duties. I have already been a staff accountant for 3 years in the private industry, so I want to make sure my next opportunity provides more experience than what I had before regardless of the job title. I was afraid this senior role is more of a staff role, as it doesn’t do any financial statement preparation either. What kind of opportunities should I look in a more senior role? Are seniors involved more with analysis, full-cycle accounting, and financial statement preparation? Again, not too focused on job title but growth.

Here is the description of the senior role (please let me know if I should still be doing this after 3 years of staff):

General Analysis

• Prepare journal entries for the month-end close and review the financial statements

• Reconcile and balance inter-company accounts between sales and expenses

• Analyze reserves for bad debt, accruals (property tax, warranty, freight, returned material) and prepaid accounts

• Perform bank reconciliation for incoming and outgoing activities

• Develop and implement Standard Operating Procedures to improve efficiencies

Accounts Receivable

• Apply cash receipts from lockbox and wire payments to customer’s account

• Review customer’s aging and ensure application of proper payments received

• Provide assistant and support to guarantee customer’s satisfaction

Accounts Payable

• Manage raw material purchases based on production activities

• Coordinate the preparation of the weekly check run for 9 locations

• Maintain accrual for A/P expense and review aging detailed report

• Prepare annual 1099 forms to the I.R.S and collect W-9 forms from vendors

Sales/Use Tax

• Calculate and file sales tax and amendments for various states

• Review tax analysis report to determine taxability and exemption status

• Calculate cash discounts and bad debt claims based on the criteria issued by the states

• Research and determine taxability on use tax for Construction in Progress projects

[mla1169]

Depends on the company. What might be called a senior accountant in a small private company would be called a staff accountant in a large publicly traded company.

For example I am an accounting manager for a small privately held manufacturer. I do everything, prepare all financials, do all analysis, make pricing decisions, all budgeting and forecasting, and I present to the board of directors and am the single point of contact for the external auditors.

At my prior company, a publicly traded international firm, our local controller NEVER prepared financials, was one of several contacts for the auditors and had never even met the board of directors.

You would assume a controller would have more responsibility than a manager, but as I said it depends on the company. Basically the larger the company you work for the more focused your responsibilities will be as opposed to a smaller place where you'd see more of the full cycle.

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[Mayo]

I think Mla1169 hit it right on the nose.

The only thing I would add is that even if a Senior in a Private Company has similar duties to a Staff in a large public company, the Senior typically has a higher pay. It's not always much, but it's usually higher. At least that's what I've seen.

Also, I've seen very small companies (think two senior accts and one CFO/Controller) where the Senior does all the basic accounting (Staff and Senior duties) and hands the final product to the CFO/Controller. In that scenario, there's much more expected from the Senior in terms of quality of work and accuracy.

Mayo, BBA, Macc

[Author]

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