What's an accountant?
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Someone who does accounting.  It is bookwork.  Crunching numbers usually dealing with finances.  They do taxes and audit the financial records.
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Accountant will charge based on the amount of work they have to do, but any good accountant should save you more money than they charge. You will certainly need one as you may be charged an amount which the tax office 'assumes' you would have made, this is usually well above what you actually make. Get one sorted.. NOW.
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Management Accountant - CMA\nAn accounting designation whose holder has formally demonstrated a mix of expertise in financial accounting and strategic management. This certification expands on financial accounting by adding management skills that help to make strategic business decisions based on financial information.\n\nInvestopedia Says: Entry to a Certified Management Accountant program requires a university degree. The program comprises a series of tests that participants need to pass to receive the designation. This accounting certification program is administered by an accounting association in each country, such as the American Accounting Association in the U.S. and the Canadian Academic Accounting Association in Canada.
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A comptroller is an official who supervises expenditures. \n\nA comptroller is also a controller, one of the chief financial officers in a corporation charged with managing the cash flows of the organization.
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This link below has guidelines and questions for choosing a small business accountant.  These questions include: Do you have your CPA? What kind of creative business advice will you offer me? Do you consider yourself to be tech-savvy? Who are your other clients? How do you calculate your fees? Why should I use you?
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I'm currently a staff auditor for a public accounting firm.  I chose audit because I believe that you learn more from audit than tax.  With tax you are in the same office each and every day and you do relatively the same thing day after day.\n\nI enjoy auditing because I have variety in my career.  I am not in the office all that often, maybe 1 week per month.  Sometimes more, sometimes less - depends on the client and the firm you work for.  I enjoy traveling to different areas and I get that opportunity.  I also like audit over tax because if you want to leave public accounting after a few years (with is pretty common in the profession) you have more career options than that from being a tax accountant.
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Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) are accountants in the United States who have passed the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination and have met additional state education and experience requirements for licensure as a CPA. Only CPAs are professionally licensed to provide to the public, attestation (including auditing) opinions on publicly disseminated financial statements.\nMany states prohibit the use of the designations "certified public accountant" or "public accountant" (or the abbreviations "CPA" or "PA") by a person who is not licensed as a CPA. According to the National Society of Accountants, the "public accountant" does exist nationwide subject to certain exceptions.
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Accounting is the principles behind and the process of tracking the resources of a company to provide management information to the company and its stakeholders.\n\nThat's the one sentence answer. \n\nFor the rest, you can have a look at the CPA site, it was written by Uni Graduates, so it takes about 3 pages to say the same thing
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You don't have to be an accountant to work in an accounts department or accountancy firm. Lots of firms have "accounts clerks" who work with accountants. The work is probably more routine but if its calculations you want that might fit the bill.\n\nSomething else you could consider is a job analysing data, for example for a polling organisation or perhaps a council (traffic surveys etc). This would be more statistics-based.
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The first thing to note is that the answer to which is more interesting is completely subjective. If you took a random survey, my guess would be that more people would answer finance rather than accounting - but the bean-counter stereotype of accountants is rapidly changing with the hype generated by Worldcom, Enron, and the Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Act.\n\nPublic accounting is a mighty interesting place to be, my recommendation would be take Intermediate Accounting - that's what will determine whether you can stand accounting. Nonetheless, auditing is a great springboard into anything in the business world.
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Broadly, accounting is defined as the systematic recording, reporting, and analysis of financial transactions of a business. \n\nThere are different types of accounting, namely: Financial Accounting, Tax Accounting, Cost Accounting and Managerial Accounting.\n\nFINANCIAL ACCOUNTING is defined as “measuring and recording business transactions and providing financial statements that are based on generally accepted accounting principles. It focuses on external reporting. \n\nFinancial statements (financial data) tell us (1) the financial position of an entity at a certain date and (2) the results of its operations (profit/loss) and the changes in its financial position and variations in stockholder's equity (investment) in a period of time. (Historical information/past events).\n\nFinancial accounting aims at satisfying the interest of the "general user" which may include: shareholders, government agencies, creditors, and the general public.\n\nMANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING. Measures and reports financial and non-financial information that helps MANAGERS make decisions to fulfill the goals of an organization. It focuses on internal reporting. \n\nCOST ACCOUNTING is an information system that classifies, accumulates, controls and assigns costs to determine costs of activities, processess or products, facilitating decision making and managerial planning and control.\n\nCost accounting plays a role in both managerial and financial accounting. Some authors describe Cost Accounting as a unifying point between Managerial and Financial Accounting.\n\nTAX ACCOUNTING is used to communicate information to the appropriate taxing authorities. Generally, the Internal Revenue Service and state tax or revenue boards. It includes the procedures for determining taxes payable and compliance with other provisions of tax laws.\n\nHope this helps...
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Yes! In every business they need an accountants or even in your family, understanding accounting is a very big help. Specially if you will go in to business, its not enough to know your product you should also know how & when to oil up.
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It would vary/depend on the amount of work involved/the size of your accounts, investments, etc.These factors would determine the amount an accountant would charge.
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No, the ACCA is a certificate given to people who have completed certain coursework which allows them to work a s a certified accountant. It is not a degree really.
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Public accounting firms can issue an opinion on financial statements as to their conformity with GAAP and employ CPA's.  Private acctg. firms usually specialize in tax issues and accounting services.
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An audit is an evaluation of an organization, system, process, project or product. It is performed by a competent, independent, objective, and unbiased person or persons, known as auditors. The purpose is to make an independent assessment based on management's representation of their financial condition (through their financial statements). Another purpose of the audit is to ensure the operating effectiveness of the internal accounting system is in accordance with approved and accepted accounting standards, statutes, regulations, or practices. It also evaluates the internal controls to determine if conformance will continue, and recommends necessary changes in policies, procedures or controls. Auditing is a part of some quality control certifications such as ISO 9000.\n\n\n\nThere are two types of auditors:\n\nInternal: Those are typically hired by the company. They audit and report to either management or the board of directors or both. \nExternal (also called outside or independent auditors): They typically work for public accounting firms that are regional, national, or international. They are typically engaged to do the audit by the board of directors. \n\n\n\nAlso, here is a link that will give you different definitions of an accountant... http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/accountant
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There are many different kinds of accountant.  If you are reasonably numerate (top 75 percentile) and logical/methodical in your approach to problem solving it isn't difficult at all.\n\nThe hard part is maintaining interest in your studies, as some segments of the qualifications can be very dull.\n\nThere are many different types of accountancy work.  Management accounting, financial accounting, bursarial work, advisory, forensic, audit.... the list goes on.  \n\nIt is a good career path, and if you take a good combination course, with a management element you may well be able to move into other work.  Most senior officers in local government and Chief Executives started their careers in accountancy.\n\nIf you are seriously considering a post graduate course in accountancy the main options are:\n\nCIMA - Chartered Institute of Management Accountants - good generic course with strong management element, liked by business and local government.\nhttp://www.cimaglobal.com/cps/rde/xchg/live/root.xsl/index.htm\nCIPFA - Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accountants - again good management element, but predominantly for those wanting a career in local government.\nhttp://www.cipfa.org.uk/\nACCA - Association of Chartered Certified Accountants - generally preferred option for practice accountants\nhttp://uk.accaglobal.com/\n\nYou could enter the career by working for one of the 'big four', KPMG, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Ernst&Young.  Or any number of other firms, or you could apply for a trainee post within local government.  You should expect to take three or four years to qualify, but the financial rewards are high.\n\nBefore you leap into the career wholeheartedly, why don't you try getting a Summer job in an accounts office, or ask local firms/councils for some work experience to give you an idea of what's involved.\n\nPersonally I drifted into finance by accident, I've spent 10 years advising non-financial managers on all aspects of financial rules and regulations and the customer facing aspects of the job gave me great satisfaction.  I've done some audit/forensic accounting, which is brilliant if you like problem solving and puzzles.  Now I'm using that experience in a general management position.\n\nGood luck, whatever you decide to do....just remember that there's more to life than work.  After all I'm 34 and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up!!