Tag Archives: CPA

Does Accounting Add Value?

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For many businesses-owners, accounting is perceived as a necessary evil. It is a cost that you have to bear but does not create value the way that other departments do, such as marketing, engineering, or finance. Some may argue about whether the accounting department of a firm is “productive” in the classical sense, but their support role is essential for any successful business. Accountants are derided for not providing as much value (especially by the finance and economics types, even though they are not productive in the classical sense, either) but without the accountants, large businesses could not operate.

Even for a small business, accounting is crucial. When your profit margin is in the thousands, you need to make sure and collect all receipts as soon as possible. Maintaining current books is crucial for this task. It becomes both more difficult and more important to discharge accounting duties as sales climb along with your need for new capital. As you move up the ranks and become a  larger company with many employees, accounting techniques, practices, and procedures enable managers to maintain control over cash flows and company resources. Anyone who has overseen cashiers knows the importance of keeping up with revenues.

Accounting information can also be used to make cost-benefit decisions, like the cost-benefit decision of how much accounting detail should be pursued. To make the cost-benefit decision, you have to use the tools of finance as well, and this is where the artificial distinction between finance and accounting dissipates. Without the building blocks of accounting, finance would have to start from scratch and end up with less reliable results. This is not because finance is not capable, but because there is value in comparative advantage. Financiers can focus their efforts on long-term capital budgeting, marketers can drum up sales, engineers can design, and accountants can precisely tally it all up.

Many companies also need accountants to report financial results to stakeholders, including stockholders, the Board of Directors, the government, and lenders. Although much of reporting for big business is typically seen as a legal requirement, the value of such standard reporting is still great and can be found in the cost of capital. Without assurance that a company’s financial reports are accurate, cost of capital would be higher to accommodate the additional risk. This concept applies to both small businesses that want to grow as well as large public corporations.

Further, our tax system in the US is quite complicated, and many companies do not have enough scale to warrant having in-house tax staff to navigate every complexity. In this way, tax accountants can help companies minimize tax expenses and associated risks. With their specialization and familiarity with tax law, tax accountants can consult with timthumbmanagement about strategies that can help them reduce their tax burden.

CFOs around the world agree that accountants add value not only to their company but to the public in general. We do this by performing critical functions that enable other business departments to do their work more efficiently. Next time you hear accountants being diminished as less important in some way, you can remind them of all these ways that accountants add value.

What is a CFP?

Too often we find ourselves in a certain track, not realizing there are other paths out there also worth exploring. Accounting students are prone to this mentality with so many thinking that a CPA is the only certification worth pursuing. While this may undeniably be the Holy Grail for accounting, there are other worthwhile careers like a Certified Financial Planner or CFP that is also worth looking into. My fellow MPA student Brooks Butler has written some on this topic but I’d like to delve deeper into this particular certification, especially since we just had a speaker talk about that in our most recent MPAC General Assembly Meeting.

Mr. Pilgrim and I

CFP is a certification for those who are looking to help clients, mostly individuals and families secure their financial future. Mr. Alan Pilgrim, coordinator for the UT Professional Development Center, visited with MPAC this week and likened the profession to that of a doctor-patient relationship. A CFP is someone who helps clients in planning their finances for life events, such as having kids, paying for school, saving for retirement, etc. With the recent financial crisis in 2008 and the marketing push initiated by the CFP Board, this role has never been more important. Mr. Pilgrim asserted that this profession would be in the top five in demand careers in the next decade, especially when you consider the retiring baby boomers needing help with their finances.

There are a few caveats to a CFP, however. First, as eager as MPA students may be to jump in this opportunity, the profession and the clientele mostly reward seasoned folks. Those with significant work experience will succeed and our young age right now, according to Mr. Pilgrim, is not going to be an advantage. This is understandable because I wouldn’t trust a 21-year old with my retirement nest egg, assuming that I have one. Nonetheless, I think it is important to be aware of this, because the demand for CFP is only going to get higher and this would be an excellent opportunity 10 or 15 years down the road.

Second, with more women handling the family’s finances, Mr. Pilgrim also observed that women CFPs have become even more in demand. Given the highly personal nature of the profession, it is not far-fetched to expect clients to be able to relate to their advisors, especially the ones helping with their finances. There’s a lot of client interaction in this profession, so solid relationship building skills are absolutely imperative.

All in all, I think a CFP is a rewarding career because at the end of the day it is about helping people. It is about creating a financial security for clients and lending one’s expertise so that they may live the life they envision for themselves. The good news for us accountants is that this is a path we can take and it’s not about collecting an alphabet soup of letters just because. One has to really examine whether a certification is suitable for one’s goals and ambitions. Because in the final analysis whether it is a CPA or a CFP or something else, it is about the value we derive from it.

CPA FAQ

My MPA friends and I at a recruiting event last week. With all this recruiting, the CPA exam is the last thing on our minds.

Hey everyone! A lot of my friends are starting to sit for the CPA exam and I realized that I probably don’t know enough about the exam or what it entails. There is so much online about the CPA exam and I will share some of my findings with you!

First, you have to qualify to sit for the exam. The AICPA does a great job at covering anything and everything you would want to know about qualifying for the exam in their Uniform CPA Candidate Bulletin.

Next, be sure to know the specific rules that your state requires. UT does a great job at helping MPAs to meet the Texas exam requirements. Some of which include: 150 semester hours and a BBA degree, 30 upper division accounting hours and 24 related business hours as well as a 3-hour ethics course. What is great about McCombs is that when we graduate we have met the educational requirements- even the ethics course!

As far as preparing for the exam, I haven’t started since I am just a third-year, but I know it takes a lot of disciplined studying. There are many different prep courses and I would definitely recommend talking to the 5th-year MPAs to see what they have used to study.

Lastly, there are 4 sections of the exam; Financial, Regulation, Audit, and Business. Since MPAs love acronyms and abbreviations, you’ve may have heard the sections referred to as FAR, REG, AUD, and BEC, respectively. FAR and AUD both contain 90 multiple choice questions and 7 task-based simulations. REG has 72 multiple choice questions and 6 task-based simulations. And finally, BEC has 72 multiple choice questions and three written tasks. It is quite a lengthy exam which is probably why each section is taken separately.

The CPA exam seems so far in my future, but it is good to be prepared before starting the process! Good luck, everyone!

Last Semester Battle!

The Battle Continues...

In 74 days, 13 hours, 44 minutes, and 14 seconds (when I was writing this), I will be walking on stage in my cap and gown in front of a beaming crowd of MPAs and their celebrating proud families and friends. But before fast forwarding to that day of cameras and diplomas, let me paint a picture of what’s going on in my very last semester of MPA:

CPA Exam

It was 5:45 in the morning when I woke up. I was tired, yet I could not stay asleep any longer. I was ready to get it over with. It had been over a month since I started preparing for this test, and I was ready to fight the battle…

These were my thoughts two and a half hours before taking one of the CPA Exam sections. I was extremely nervous, regardless of the amount of time I had put in to study for the exam, I felt that I still was not prepared enough. There will always be a problem left to review or a formula left to memorize. I was panicking, yet I managed to calm myself down after eating a protein-loaded breakfast that would hopefully stimulate my brain. Continue reading Last Semester Battle!

Fiction & Accounting Venn-Diagram

In honor of both my accounting finals being over AND my internship at American Short Fiction coming to a wrap, I am dedicating this post to accounting & fiction. Think of a venn-diagram – “fiction” written into one circle and “accounting” written into the other.  Here are just a few names that might reside in that overlap. I’m pretty excited about this attempt…

1) David Foster Wallace, a terrific and ground breaking fiction writer and essayist known for his ginormous book Infinite Jest. His last book was, you guessed it, about accounting. Searching around the NYT for a bit, I found this: “David Foster Wallace and the Literary Tax Accountant”.  According to the article, Wallace “pursued tax arcana with an exuberantly obsessive relish.” After enrolling in accounting courses and corresponding with a handful of I.R.S. agents and CPAs, Wallace came up with the world and characters of his posthumously published novel, the Pale King. A plus: his exchanges with various accountants (the brunt of his research) are housed here at the University of Texas at the Harry Ransom Center. Class field trip?

I think that Wallace’s interest in tax accounting /research was genuine. He studied tax accounting with a philosophical interest in system logic and ultimately built his book around the premise that “tax work may be the gateway to transcendent ecstasy.” A bit far fetched and absurd, yes, but let’s think: essentially, within our tax structure lies the minutiae, collective compartments, and number-coded ecosystems of our lives, no? Hmm…

Continue reading Fiction & Accounting Venn-Diagram