As if you haven't gotten this question before, right? "Why would you want to be an accountant? All you do is add and subtract? ...debits and credits... It's so boring ...overpayed..." As a freshman Economics student who has no desire of becoming an official accountant, I cannot provide a reasonable reasonable response to the public onslaught of attacks against the career of accounting. What I can do, however, is heap some more unbiased coals onto the fire of the debate.
The following information is meant to provide some insight as to how important accounting is and how a few legal mixups can really screw things up.
Many laws and acts have been implemented to make sure that companies prepare and present financial information in a certain manner so that no party can, in a prefect world, utilize loop holes in the accounting process. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as well as the GAAP, SEC, IASB, IFRS, and FASB (whose names are easy to find with a quick web search) are all proponents and enforcement acts/organizations that assure the clear objective of maintaining valid and consistent measurements in transactional recognitions across businesses as they adhere to a full-disclosure model of financial records presentation. Simply put, businesses - both service and not-for-profit organizations - must follow an extensive set of rules and guidelines regarding to the ways in which they prepare and present their financial statements. For more information on specific principles on this matter, consider visiting IFRS.com, FASB.org, and ifrs.org.
Now, these rules are important for a few reasons:
1. Making a mistake at any point in time - be it a legal or mathematical or logistical error - can be costly in a future financial period.
2. Financial fraud can result in disputes that ultimately destroy a company if not resolved quickly.
3. Failure to account for certain transactions correctly can result in an incorrect adjustment of management that may not benefit the business.
4. YOU WILL LOSE MONEY IF YOU CAN'T PLAY BY THE RULES! People are out looking to sue; that's where the real business is.
5. CEOs and CFOs will look to YOU (the accountant) if a financial mishap is afoot.
6. Most of all, these rules prevent accountants from being in the wrong...because accountants hate nothing more than the mere possibility of being wrong; they are the elite statisticians who can manipulate addition and subtraction like no other, and should be recognized as such. Math is never wrong, and neither are accountants.
I know this isn't much, but one cannot deny the risks of being an accountant. Accounting is the backbone of a business's financial status in the world and the organization that allows for innovation and implementation. Moreover, when proficient accounting is not part of the picture, the business will undoubtedly fall apart.
Accounting aside, there are now 70 days until Christmas as of October 16.
No comments:
Post a Comment