HI5020 Analysis Of Requirements For Corporate Accountants Assessment Answer

Answer :

Financial corporate accounting

< align="justify" style="text-align:justify;">Introduction

The current assignment is designed to analyze the requirements sought by employers when they hire corporate accountants for their organizations. The requirements are in terms of the knowledge, skills, experience and personal attributes of the person seeking the job. In this era several courses are designed to make a person become a good corporate accountant, and so is the MPA course. Several job advertisements have been collected from various sources and the roles, skills, and responsibilities mentioned in them are compared with the topic taught in MPA HI5020 Corporate Accounting. This is done to briefly understand the theoretical and practical aspects of the corporate accounting world.

Number of job advertisements with respective sources

The total numbers of advertisements collected are thirty.

The different sources of collection of these advertisements with the respective number are as follows:

Name of organizations posting the advertisement with industry specification

Job titles mentioned on the portal by respective companies

Personal attributes required by all the jobs collectively

All the jobs researched relate to corporate accounting and management including financial and taxation management. The personal attributes specifically required by every job are as follows:

• Strong communication skills, both written as well as oral. The ability must extend to communication with multiple stakeholders.
• Outstanding skills in managing time and organizational work for efficient working.
• Strong analytical skills both on the manual part and technical footing. The reasoning of personnel must be strong as well as details must be of priority to him (Ahadiat, and Martin, 2015).
• The communication skills must encompass strong interpersonal skills as well. The personnel must be conveniently able to liaise with different parties within the organization and outside the organization. The presentation of communication should also be appreciably well. 
• The personnel needs to be diligent and be hardworking (Hambrick, Misangyi, and Park, 2015).
• A good amount of experience in the field of accounting, taxation, finances, and management is favorable for the posts opened by many companies.
• Working attitude must be positive and self-motivated (Lim, et al. 2016).
• The personnel must be up for traveling for work.
• Effective working in a team-based work environment. The traits of leadership are also advantageous.
• Flexible to change management and regularly changing the business environment (Hillier, Korczak, and Korczak, 2015).
• Ability to work under pressure with motivated zeal.
• The personnel must be up to handling multiple tasks at a time (Rikhardsson, 2017).
• Some job profiles require knowledge of specific languages like Dutch and Mandarin.

Roles, responsibilities, skills and other intents of corporate accountant for the job

• The financial statements and related work papers are to be prepared and reviewed. This involves the preparation of installment activity statements, business activity statements, general journals, and general ledgers. The period of preparation and review is diversified ranging from monthly, to quarterly, to semi-annually to yearly. 
• Along with the preparation and review of the financial statements and related components, the duty to analyze the information present in them and form reconciliations wherever required shall also be the duty of the corporate accountant. These include bank reconciliations, account payable reconciliation, accounts receivable reconciliation, etc. (Bee, and Hie, 2015).
• The preparation as well as a review of returns both internally required and statutorily required on regular as well as annual intervals is a key responsibility.  The returns can be for management use or could be statutory like tax returns (Uhm, Lee, and Jeon, 2017).
• Ensuring that the accounting policies and procedures followed in the organization comply with the requirements set by the accounting authorities prescribing the same.
• Along with the preparation of financial statements based upon the historical results, a major responsibility involved in the preparation of the budgeted financial statements by forecasting the organization's future performance. This has to be done by on-looking and following the trends set by the business.
• The main responsibility is to undertake the task of financial information gathering, accumulation, presentation, analysis and review mainly during the month-end to keep the work in a timely frame and under control (Biswas, and Suar, 2016).
• Liaising with the different involved business parties like suppliers, clients, customers, dealers, agents, shareholders, etc. to effectively communicate solutions to their queries and vice-versa.
• Assisting the project heads during project management and implementation. Also assisting several other departmental managers including the financial manager, especially during month-end.
• Ensuring the placement of internal control correctly at the place as well as smooth running all over the year.
• Assisting the external auditors as well as the internal audit department in the legally acceptable manner.
• Extending tax advice for the preparation of tax returns, including for GST, CGT, FBT, tax liabilities and payroll. The role includes tax planning simultaneously.
• Closely reviewing the accounting, taxation and financial roles delegated to staff and assisting them as and when required. 
• Along with the preparation of financial statements, budgets and returns, ensuring taking up of a proper backup promptly to prevent information loss in any possible circumstance.
• Undertaking the preparation of a well-formulated tax register wherein the details of both internal as well as external taxes are documented timely.
• For the organizations involved with transfer pricing transactions, preparation of documentation for same and keeping the same backed up.
• Conducting review for better compliance with the taxation regimes. Ensuring the results of review leads to an improvement in the practices for taxation followed currently for optimum utilization (Rutledge, et al. 2016).
• Checking up the transactions occurring in the business house daily.
• Being ready for undertaking and efficiently completing the ad-hoc tasks related to the field as and when required (Abayadeera, and Watty, 2016).

Academic and professional qualification

The academic and professional qualifications including specific skills that are required from corporate accountants as per the job advertisements are as follows:

• Certification of High School
• Degree in Accounting, preferably in Australian tertiary
• Completion of qualifications like CA, IPA, or CPA
• Certification of XERO (current)
• possession of individual tax agent license 
• Information technology knowledge, i.e. knowledge of MS Office applications like Excel, word; MYOB; outlook, etc. 
• Knowledge of different IT enabled accounting softwares. E.g. SAGE ERP, SAP, Oracle, TM1
• Knowledge of digital marketing and its products (Fedaseyeu, Linck, and Wagner, 2018).

Relation of role, responsibilities and tasks found in job advertisement (MPA unit HI5020 Corporate Accounting

The HI5020 Corporate Accounting unit comprises of a comprehensive framework consisting of both practical as well as theoretical concepts of the corporate accounting world. The different learning outcomes of the topics of the program concentrate on some specific learnings that include:

• manner of distribution of profits
• the manner in which accounting of liabilities and assets is done
• procedure for formulation of financial accounts individually and on a consolidated basis
• The procedure for investment accounting including equity investments comprising the effects of changes in ownership.
• Understanding and practical application of the requirements set up by the Corporation Law, Australian Accounting Standards including International Financial Reporting Standards, international laws, and the Australian Stock Exchange on the Australian listed entities.
• Analysis and interpretation of the financial information presented in the financial statements of companies.
• Enhancing the personal attributes to match up the desired skills expected from corporate accountants in the real world.

There are several roles and responsibilities which the different organizations are seeking while hiring a corporate accountant. These key roles and responsibilities closely relate to the learnings of unit HI5020 Corporate Accounting. Based on the job, advertisements identified several findings can be made.

The basic role of the corporate accountant is to translate the accounting requirements set by the national and international accounting standards into feasible practical solutions for the organizations they work into. Every organization requires its corporate accountants to work promptly to prepare the financial statements and review them, mostly at month-end. For the organizations that work on an international level, want the corporate accountants to form financial accounts on a consolidated basis. After preparation of the financial statements, it is the responsibility of the corporate accountant himself to review and analyze the information presented in those financial statements.  

After the financial statements are prepared, reviewed and analyzed, it is the duty of the corporate accountant only to check whether the compliance with the requirements laid by the securities exchange had been met or not. Also, the corporate accountant of any organization is assumed to have some set of personal attributes. These attributes comprise basic analytical skills, communication skills, and strong reasoning.

The roles and responsibilities of the corporate accountant do not end here. However, the topics covered under HI5020 Corporate Accounting unit do cover these aspects only. There are several other roles and responsibilities which are expected from a corporate accountant only, but they are not included in the learnings provided by HI5020 Corporate Accounting. However, even not complete, but all the topics covered under the before mentioned unit closely deal with the key roles and responsibilities which are expected certainly out of a corporate accountant. These are the basic roles which a corporate accountant cannot deny to know or work upon. Hence, it can be concluded that not all, but most of the roles and responsibilities of corporate accountants are covered under the topics designed for HI5020 Corporate Accounting course.

Additional topics from MPA unit HI5020 Corporate Accounting that are listed on the job advertisement

The roles and responsibilities of a corporate accountant are already discussed extensively. However, the following table makes a checklist of the roles and responsibilities which are and are not covered by the topics designed in MPA unit HI5020 Corporate Accounting.

From the above table, one can analyze that the MPA HI5020 Corporate accounting itself is not enough to form a person to gather everything they need to be a good corporate accountant. The MPA course is divided into several topics and all those topics together are efficiently required to learn the entire package of roles and responsibilities expected out of a corporate accountant. The additional topics which are not inclusive in MPA HI5020 Corporate Accounting are marked "no" in the above table.

E.g. the task of financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting is not included in the topics covered by MPA HI5020 Corporate Accounting, but in HI5002 Finance for Business.

Similarly, the topics related to tax return preparation, tax planning and tax advice are not covered in MPA HI5020 Corporate Accounting, but in HI6028 Taxation Theory, Practice and Law.

Hence, the study of the entire MPA programme with different subjects enables an entire understanding of all the key roles and responsibilities of a corporate accountant.

MPA unit HI5020 Corporate Accounting helped in gaining skills, experience and attributes needed to become a corporate accountant

The skills and attributes needed to become a corporate accountant include:

• Strong communication and interpersonal skills
• IT skills, i.e. proficiency with IT systems and software including XERO, excel, word, ERP, SAGE ERP, Oracle, etc.
• Proficient analytical skills and the ability to look into the details of a transaction
• Time management skills and the ability to work well under the condition of high pressure.
• A positive and self-motivated working attitude
• A team spirit with the ability and skills to show leadership when working demands
• Multi-tasking abilities

The experience required by different job advertisement includes:

• 1 to 5 years of experience in an accounting or financial organization in the same role for which the job is applied.
• Individual tax license agreements along with the experience of taxation in the Australian region.
• Experience in doing work under accounting packages backed with technological working.
• Experience of working in the accounting department in a multi-national organization

The topics covered in MPA HI5020 Corporate Accounting are well equipped to enable students to develop the personal attributes and certain skills required to be a good corporate accountant. These include analytical skills, time management skills, team spirit, working under pressure, strong communication skills and multi-tasking abilities. This is because the course is designed to enable students to work practically on several assignments, for which a particular time frame is provided. The students are expected to work within the time specified. Herein, the students have to deal with work pressure and have to meet deadlines. Also, several assignments assigned are to be completed in groups, which add to the team spirit.

The assignments are based on the practical world situations and issues of the accounting field, and often the research-based work is required to be done which is on the real-life listed entities. This way the analytical skills also get developed. The entire work is supposed to be done using information technology and Ms. Office applications. This adds to IT skills.

Conclusively, the topics of MPA HI5020 add a lot to the skills and attributes required to be a good corporate accountant, but nothing to the practical experience demanded by this field in terms of actually working on the field in organizations in the same role.

Conclusion

A good corporate accountant as concluded from the discussion above is not the one with multiple and diverse theoretical knowledge, but the one who can apply them effectively in the real field of accounting and finance. Apart from qualifications, it is the experience which the employers seek largely nowadays while hiring any person to the post of corporate accountant. Obviously, the degree qualification in the field of accounting does matter, but so is the relevance of the personal attributes and skills inhibited by personnel. The topics which are covered in the MPA HI5020 Corporate Accounting have a close relation with the teachings required to be a good corporate accountant, but they too do not cover everything conclusively. Therefore, it could be inferred that with the ramified changes in the economic, corporate accounting knowledge and courses gives good exposure to the individual for their future growth in the corporate accounting filed.