Understanding the “lesser” accounting and finance roles
In 2023 and beyond, students have a huge amount of opportunity to start and grow their career in the dynamic and challenging field of accounting. However, there are many students that have absolutely no clue what their career path should look like once they graduate. I often talk about why public accounting is a great place for students to start their careers, but it’s also important to understand why certain roles have the opposite reputation. Today, we are going to examine three accounting roles that are often associated with less-than-optimal career growth.
Disclaimer – Before we jump in, it’s important to understand that having one or more of these roles on your resume isn’t a bad thing. While these jobs tend to have limited career growth opportunities, they also teach essential skills and are also essential to the operation of many businesses. For career driven accountants, these roles are great places to start and gain experience while in school or in the first couple of years of a career.
Accounts Payable & Accounts Receivable – Are essential roles to any organization, as they ensure that bills are being paid, and customer invoices are being collected. Many smaller organizations will have the responsibilities associated with Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable assigned to someone who is also doing bookkeeping and accounting, which is great because that person is seeing multiple aspects of the business. The less than stellar reputation that these titles get is due to the way they function in larger organizations, where someone in the AP or AR department is only doing data entry and data validation all day long. While these functions are essential to any strong financial function, they are never done the same way at any two organizations, making only the more core skills in these roles transferrable. Because of this, these roles are great for someone who is starting their career or doesn’t value career progression, but they aren’t great for someone looking for growth.
Bookkeeper – Another role where the task itself is essential to a healthy financial function. Bookkeepers are the backbone of financial record-keeping and handle day-to-day transactions, maintain ledgers, reconcile accounts, and generate financial reports. As discussed above with AR and AP responsibilities, smaller businesses typically have the responsibilities for a bookkeeper mixed in with AP and AR, which mitigates the common downsides of the role with diversification of responsibilities. But when someone has the title of bookkeeper, it typically means they are only entering information from invoices and bank statements to the accounting system and nothing more, which boils down to the same weakness noted above – the role being limited to data entry and data validation. While the title itself is not something that career accountants will want to hold on to for a long time, bookkeeping experience as a skill is incredibly valuable.
Tax Preparer – Much like the above two examples, the devil is in the details for tax preparation. If you are preparing tax returns as a part of your role at a public accounting firm, that’s great! If you are preparing tax returns for an H&R block or similar business, you won’t learn much after one or two tax seasons. The reason why I mention tax preparer as a title is because the evolution of a tax accountant involves more than just tax return preparation, it also involves tax planning to proactively structure the business operations and transaction to pay less taxes. Usually, someone with the title of tax preparer will not be given an opportunity to participate in tax planning unless they are the owner of a tax preparation business. Many students, including myself, get their start in tax by having this role on their resume and it’s a great role for a student or recent graduate to get their foot in the door,
What do these roles have in common?
They tend to be entry level roles! - Many of these roles are often filled by someone with limited or no experience, which is indicative of the skills needed to get started. While there are some higher level versions of these roles, they often don’t require the candidate to have accounting experience and are often filled with people who don’t have an accounting background. This implies that the roles don’t require or value a higher level of accounting education.
Limited career mobility - While there may be some companies that have AP clerks and AP managers, it’s often the case that working in these roles doesn’t allow for the best career growth. Not everyone is looking for career progression but if you’re reading this, it’s likely that you are, and these roles aren’t a good fit for you as a result.
Remember - These roles are essential! They just may not be the best for career minded accountants. If you are looking for a role after graduation, I would recommend that you don’t stay in any of these for too long!