[CPYay]

What are the types of jobs and career paths for each job that begin in the CPA firms?

All of my experience is private industry, but I’m considering working for a firm to meet the educational requirement. I’m not fond of the auditing path due to the horror stories I’m hearing.

What other jobs do they have that you’ve experienced or recommend? Where did/do these jobs lead in 3-5 years?

[Mayo]

“I'm not fond of the auditing path due to the horror stories I'm hearing”

Horror stories are not specific to audit in and of itself. It's more specific to public accounting in general.

But to answer your question:

Typical PA firm jobs:

1a – audit
1b – IT audit
2 – Tax compliance (aka returns)
3 – Tax consulting (let's plan your expenditures for the future to reduce taxes)
4 – Bookkeeping

Depending on the firm, some other positions might be:

5 – Business valuation (not usually done by staff at small firms. Usually it is a Manager or higher level position with proper qualifications)
6 – Forensic/Fraud
7 – General business consulting (can vary quite a bit, but it can encompass anything from performance improvement all the way to business owner hand holding through basic business stuff)
8 – Outsourced Internal audit function
9 – Technical accounting services

Mayo, BBA, Macc

[livealittle]

my firm may be a little different in that there are several career paths.

We have 3 departments, Audit, Tax and Solutions. I am a supervisor in the Solutions department. Solutions does a lot of what we term “CFO Services”. There are a lot of small-medium sized companies that can really use the guidance of a CFO with experience in Financial Analysis, compliance, etc. We offer that at an outsourcing rate rather than at a 6+ figure salary for a CFO. In essence my firm becomes the “accounting” department.

I do a lot of small business consulting and payroll compliance services. I also help trouble shoot systems and help companies find efficiency in their processes.

At my firm, you may enter our workforce as an intern, staff or senior level. Very few people come in at a higher level than senior. My firm wants longevity in our staff and promotes from within if possible.

BEC - 8/8/16
REG - 66, 77
AUD - 81
FAR - 9/8/16

[Mayo]

Yes, I forgot to mention that some smaller/medium sized firms let you do both audit and tax.

Mayo, BBA, Macc

[CPYay]

Which is recommended for someone like me? Private industry experience as an accountant doing recs, GL, and financial statements.

I'm not sure if I should venture into something I haven't done before, but sounds interesting (business consulting or IT auditing for example), or stick to what I know and use that experience.

[confusedcandidate]

Mayo said it well but you can break it down even more. For example, within tax you can go quite a few routes. If you make it rain and bring in tons of clients you might make partner and then your job is far less technical and far more about bringing in business. You can be a manager and then have a technical role making decisions, reviewing returns, managing clients and staff, etc. You can be a guru on the mountain in tax research land, and then your job is to be the “go to” guy for every higher level question that nobody can answer, and do quality control for all the work that leaves the office.

You can specialize in international, SALT, trusts and estates, real estate, etc.

Then take any of the above and go to a small firm, midsized/regional, national, int'l, and your experience will be different at all of them. Even office to office in the same firm will be completely different.

Endless choices.

Weekends are meaningless to a CPA candidate

[Author]

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