There’s no shame in pursuing a career for its high salary. After all, we work in order to be able to support ourselves and to provide ourselves and our loved ones with a comfortable lifestyle. So, if you’re looking for something lucrative, you may want to pursue a career in finance.

These careers not only offer great starting wages, but they also tend to have plenty of opportunity for advancement and promotion, and many individuals in the field find themselves taking home huge bonuses at the end of the year. There are all sorts of roles in the field, from investment banking to trading, analytics, financial advisory positions, and jobs in the financial media. But for now, let’s focus on one of the most accessible financial job roles that tends to always be hiring: accounting.

What Does an Accountant Do?

An accountant’s primary role is to prepare and examine others’ financial records. They take the information provided to them by self-employed individuals and business owners and ensure that these professionals know exactly how much tax they owe, allowing them to make sure that it is paid on time and that they avoid any fines for late submission. They may also be employed by a company to work out the tax that should be deducted from its employees’ salary too. If you do follow a career in accountancy, you will find yourself carrying out various tasks on a day to day basis to ensure that this all goes to plan.

You will give advice regarding how to maintain comprehensive financial statements. You will also examine financial statements, making sure that they are both accurate and comply with current laws and regulations put in place by the government. You will work out taxes owed and draw up tax returns on others’ behalf. You can also find yourself giving advice in regards to where and how a business or individual can save money and become more profitable.

Expected Salary

As we have previously mentioned, accountancy can be an extremely lucrative job. It is estimated that that average accountant makes around $68,150 a year. However, the best paid ten percent of accountants took home an average of $120,910 in 2016, so there’s plenty of room to make a lot more money per annum.

Competition

When a job role offers a good salary, there’s bound to be plenty of competition for it. This can be off putting to many of us, as we don’t want to invest time, money, and effort into developing a particularly skillset and pursuing a particular career, only to never land a job in the end. However, accountancy as a profession is expected to grow by around ten percent and it is estimated that around 140,300 new jobs will be established in the field by 2026. This keeps in line with the ten percent increase in financial job in general over the next decade.

Educational Requirements

The accounting industry is strictly monitored, and to engage with it, you will have to stick to a strict code of practice. Accounting is regulated by three main bodies – the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA), CPA Australia (CPA), and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Australia (ICAA). You will need to be sufficiently qualified in order to enter any of these bodies, with the CPA and ICAA requiring a minimum of a bachelor’s degree in accounting, and the IPA requiring a diploma or advanced diploma of accounting. Without these qualifications, you will not be allowed to create and sign off financial reports.

Management

If you become successful in your field, you may find yourself becoming overwhelmed by the number of clients you are dealing with. But not to worry. You can make use of management services for accountants. These services free up your time by taking care of the administrative work that you will otherwise spend extended periods of time carrying out yourself. They can take care of your schedule, allowing you to get on with your work rather than dealing with phone calls and emails, and maximizing the number of clients you can fit into your working week.

Progression

The more experience you gain in the field, and the better reviews and recommendations you get, the more people who will seek you out as their accountant. Now, you will not be able to maintain all of the clients you have ever dealt with. A good way to progress is to slowly increase your fees. This will help you to maintain the best-paying clients and make the most profit from your work. You will slowly make your way up the ladder, until you have a client base of notable and affluent individuals who will pay you generously in return for your work.

As you can see, becoming an accountant will require a fair amount of hard work and effort, and you will have to dedicate an extended period of time to studying and building up a good base of clients. However, the pay that you take home at the end of the day will all eventually be worth it!