[N_FullThrottle]

I am three years out of college and have been in corporate accounting ever since. Current position is a staff accountant where I post JE’s, review expenses, and reconcile. We are nowhere near a small business…about $100M in revenue a year I’d say.
I have recently been asked to help do the books of two small businesses…well, one being a non-profit..the other being a small personal training service. I have really enjoyed doing the work, but I feel like I am limited in what it takes to understand their small business needs.
Any recommendations on how I may break into small business accounting. I really enjoy helping make peoples’ dreams and hard work a reality…they just need to organize their financial records!

Let's do this...

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*Fingers cross that I pass before the new format in 2017*

[mafalo1989]

If you're looking for a job with a small company I would suggest checking Craigslist and some of the other online job sites. I've been working in small business accounting since I graduated in May 2015 and it has it's perks but there are definitely some downfalls too. You really need to be sure you know what you're getting into because smaller companies don't have the resources to be hiring new people every time someone gets tired of the job.

In my experience I'd suggest you really do your research. I've worked for 2 very family oriented business and the first one was an absolute nightmare. The problem with working for small businesses is that a lot of times they hire family and if you aren't in the family then you're the one that has to take responsibility every time a family member screws up. I ended up getting fired from my first job as an Accounting Specialist because the owner's son was in charge of all shipping and receiving of products and he CONSTANTLY messed up, so they put someone with no inventory experience, fresh out of college with no inventory experience in charge of babysitting him. I was expected to memorize thousands of product numbers and descriptions with no notice at all and I had to check him and 90% of the time he forgot to call me to the dock to check the orders and things got shipped out wrong. Even though he was the one costing us thousands of dollars I was the one fired for it. Same thing with my new company. I now work for a financial services firm and I literally have a spreadsheet I check every day to make sure the owner's family members are doing their job and if I don't make sure it's done fast enough I'm in trouble, even though the tasks aren't my responsibility. My dad and several of his friends own them as well and out of the probably 20 small business owners I know my father is the only one who held family members responsible and fired them when they screwed up, he refuses to hire any more family because it isn't fair to the other employees to have to take the blame just because the owner is afraid of upsetting their son, brother, sister, niece or nephew or whatever the person may be. I have no problem being held responsible for my own mistakes but a lot of the time I'm left feeling like an overpaid babysitter and I can't tell you how infuriating it is to be told multiple times that your job is on the line when you know that the only reason it's on the line is because some family member is being negligent.

The pay is also much, much less. I make $32,500/year and I manage a tax business. They are paying for me to get my CPA but I'm basically working 3 full time jobs right now; the tax stuff, marketing and general stuff, and studying. It's exhausting. If I was working for a bigger company or a bigger CPA firm I would be making at least $10,000 more. People always ask me why I stay with my company with such little pay and the only reason I haven't left is because I like the people I work with and they are offering me training and trying to help me develop professionally. Not every company does this, the 1st job I had offered me minimal training, they showed me how to use the accounting software and that was it. I feel like that's common in small businesses because they don't have tons of money to pay people and train people that don't have knowledge of how things are supposed to work. I had plenty of opportunities that would have given me higher pay but they wouldn't give me study materials, time to take the exams, time to study at work during free time.

The hours can also be long. Small businesses generally don't have accounting departments and if they do they are small. I'm the only accountant at my job now and at my last job it was me and the CFO. With that being the case a ton of responsibility falls on me and I have to work a lot of long hours to get things done. Right now I'm in charge of all accounting data entry, all reconciliations, all budgeting, and whatever else my boss needs me to do.

I feel like it's worth it to me because they are helping me a lot though the CPA process and I like working with the people I work with. If it wasn't for those two things I would for sure be working at a bigger place. It's just a lot more work than organizing their financial records, that's a small part of it but if a company is actually trying to hire an accountant it will be much more than just the financial records. The work is not really as rewarding as it would seem either. The business I work for now is growing and will always continue to grow, just because of the nature of the services we provide. There are still times when we don't have enough money in the bank to make payroll and our other bills and I have to spend time looking at the budget and trying to fix things. The last place I worked for was in the medical supplies business and they were never less than $10,000 deep in credit debt and they could barely meet the essentials like payroll and utilities too.

I know this is super long but I'm just trying to get across that you have to really know that working for a small business is a lot more stressful than it seems, I can almost guarantee it's more stressful than working at a company that produces $100M annually in revenue. I've seen my boss drop hundreds of dollars on hiring employees and training them and providing them with CPE opportunities to expand their knowledge and then the second the job gets a little stressful they leave and it proves to be hundreds of dollars wasted on someone that didn't know what they were getting into.

[N_FullThrottle]

Super helpful information all around! Thank you so much! Did you just learn on the job? I am struggling with figuring out where to begin.

Let's do this...

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*Fingers cross that I pass before the new format in 2017*

[mafalo1989]

Yeah I learned everything on the job. My two 4-year accounting degrees in public and private accounting turned out to be pretty useless except for helping me meet the requirement for the exam. Both job postings were targeted toward individuals with an maximum education level of a high school degree or a GED, I'm way overqualified by education standards. Every company is going to do things differently. For example, my first job kept paper records of everything so the place was a mess all the time. The place I'm does everything electronically. It depends on what company you go to work for. You have to be really knowledgeable about things or be willing to do a ton of research because if there is one thing I've realized it's that the owner's of the companies don't know much about accounting, they don't want to know much about accounting, and they want nothing to do with it which is good because they'll hire someone like us to do it for them. Before this job I had never created a budget or done taxes, I had to come up with a budget on my own and just keep redoing it if my boss didn't like the format. With taxes there was another preparer to train me. They also weren't keeping hard evidence of expenditures via receipts so I suggested that and implemented it, there's so little of that information that I can keep all 12 months of receipts in a desk drawer but it helps just in case an auditor comes around. Small companies are terrified of auditors and they seem to get picked on a lot, my dad's company has been in business since 1999 and they've probably been audited by the IRS between 7-10 times just because it's a small business. At the first job I had the CFO to train me but it was minimal training. I would emphasize that you may not know everything right off the bat but if someone is willing to teach you the way they like things done you can learn. If you get an interview just tell them straight up, no you haven't worked as an employee of a small business before but while working at the bigger company you had the opportunity to work with some smaller clients and you enjoyed the work, you learned some of the stuff you need to know, you understand that every business is different and you're willing to learn.

[mafalo1989]

In every one of my interviews I was totally honest and I said something along the lines of “I know I don't have much experience but I am familiar with the small business environment and I want to learn. I don't want to go to work and have enough stuff to do for the first 4 hours of the day and be stuck doing nothing for the second half. I want to work at a place that is going to have enough work for me to do and a place that is willing to take the time and effort to train me properly so I can learn and benefit the company. If you want someone that's going to be a chatty Cathy then you've got the wrong girl. I'm not going to be like that, I want to work. I have no problem being friendly toward co-workers but I'm not going to go out of my way to start a conversation unless I have a work question.” That turned some people off but those were people I wouldn't have wanted to work for anyway. They should be trying to impress you just as much as you're trying to impress them and when you're totally honest like that it will get people's attention and I've found a lot of people in the small business type environments appreciate that more than anything. If it's a good company they'll hire an honest person and take the time to develop them versus hiring a person that says they're great and some things but doesn't back it up once they show up to work there.

[Missy]

The needs of every small business will be different, even businesses in the same exact industry.

What I've found personally is the best way to make yourself irreplacable is to be able to create reports and metrix that help the decision makers. For example I work for a very small company now and my predecessor was basically just a bookkeeper. I was able to export sales order reports out of Quickbooks and create graphs and tables that showed trends, and helped the sales managers to identify opportunities. I ran reports of customers who hadn't ordered in over a year so the sales staff could identify where we were losing business or where maybe a key contact had moved on to another company and we needed to reach out and reintroduce ourselves. I negotiated a better purchase price for our #1 selling item that brought the company from consistent losses to break even. As the accountant or finance manager you have access to basically all of the information they need and need to be intuitive enough to slice and dice it in a way they never even thought of but helps them to grow.

The other thing is even for the smallest business, streamlining and improving visibility. Since most of our vendors are now emailing invoices, I've forgone printing and filing. I just attach everything in quickbooks so I can drill right down to the detail level on everything and be able to email that detail to my CEO or President.

Basically being VERY tuned in to the owners, managers etc and listening to where they're struggling then presenting them with information that helps them to improve is the difference between being a bookkeeper and a valued management team member.

Licensed Massachusetts Non Reporting CPA since 2012
Finance/Admin/HR Manager

[Recked]

so 2 simple pieces of advice.
small business owners want to save money on taxes. if you show them how to save, and how much you are saving them, you show them your value and they will stick around for life.

not for profits bookkeeping and accounting is a bit more tricky. there is little exposure as there are no tax consequences usually, but the records are typically available to the public depending on the state you are in. most people i know prefer not to deal with not for profits due to the added complexity/general pain in the ass. if you specialize in this you might just have a nice niche market.

both small businesses and not for profits often use quickbooks. learn quickbooks, the ins and outs. automation and downloading transactions can save you time, but it can also create a real mess, so get comfortable with the software and how it works before you attempt to download from the bank or attach an account to the online bank.

GOOD LUCK! build that book of business and soon you can quit your day job and just work for yourself.

[Author]

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