The Accounting Manager is concerned with providing management the accounting information needed.
Primary Responsibilities:
- The Accounting Manager provides vital accounting information to help management make informed business decisions.
- The Accounting Manager provides accounting information that will benefit shareholders and creditors.
- The Accounting Manager provides forward-looking, instead of history accounting information.
The Accounting Manager focus on information that is to be used within the corporation not meant for the public. The information accumulated by the Accounting Manager is geared to help in investments or projects of profits for future production. The Accounting Manager formulates strategies that will help departmental management in making decisions. This helps in the planning and constructing business activities. The information that the Accounting Manager gathers helps in making decision within the corporation as to operations and profit margins. The Accounting Manager helps to safe guard assets of a corporation by being able to forecast future happenings in the economy.
The Accounting Manger is capable of recognizing the Cause and Effect accounting which is vital in forecasting business adventures. Activity based costing can help with the greater expenses than that of figuring the cost of raw materials. We need to be able to know what is the cost and effect of machinery breaking down. The loss of labor and the cost of repairs can soon mount up because we are not getting production out but the laborers still need to be compensated. All these factors are cost drivers that the Accounting Manager needs to be able to keep a handle on for futures.
The Accounting Manager has a duel role of reporting working as a strategic partner and provider of decision based financial and operational information management. The Accounting Manager is responsible for managing the business team and at the same time must report relationships and responsibilities to the corporations’ finance organization. The Accounting Manager provides inclusive of forecasting and planning, performing variance analysis, reviewing and monitoring costs inherent in the business are the ones that have dual accountability to both finance and the business team. Several things are considered when forecasting the corporation’s future financial situation.
Accounting Managers must consider the following:
- The cost of the development of new products.
- The cost of the research work in finding new products.
- The economy in the futures effect on clients.
- The sales team ability to increase customer base.
- The capability of the production team to increase production.
The Accounting Manager must prepare several reports that will keep the board and the management team aware of future costs as well as the ongoing costs of business. They also need to keep a client profitability analysis worksheet up-to-date. This is one of the main sources of income and the management team needs to know just how well they are doing on an average day in comparison to say a year before. This helps them to understand if they are climbing in sales figures or if they are falling behind. This also lets production managers know if they should increase production of products or if they need to have a slow down period. Often holidays and certain seasons may affect the sales output of products. This in turn affects the profit margin. The Accounting Manager must look at the whole year and not base his calculations on just one bad day or one really good day.
Many corporations derive much of their profits from how the financial banking, housing market and telecommunication companies are doing. The economy can be very unsettled at times making the job of the Accounting Manager difficult but on the whole it is possible to make good forecasts. Many Accounting Managers prefer to base their profits on the stock market instead watching how stocks and bonds are growing or slowing. In any case the Accounting Manager has their own chart of profits that the company has made and during what season is the best for their sales and this is how they can forecast for the future. The history is a good path to look at in order to know how the future will prove to be successful. Many Accounting Managers are fully aware of this and look at the company’s history along with other important factors to make their forecasts.