Changing career direction from FA to MA

kluivert

I am currently working in practice as a financial accountant for the last two and half years, and a job opportunity has come up with a company that I work with part time at the weekends to work as a management accountant, preparing budgets, forecasts and costings.

I was never any good at management accounting in college and its been nearly three years since I looked at it.

I dont know if it would be a wise move or not.

The money is great, its an extra 10k a yr more than what I am on now, and is close to home as well, so is my current job, so its not a real factor.

I am use to preparing financial accounts auditing and taxation, and if I took the job I would have to learn all over again how to do costings and prepare budgets or in my case learn how to do costings and budgets etc.

This is the only factor that is making me confused.

I would be going into the company at middle level its not as if I would be starting at the bottom.

Is there any other accountants out there or any one who would have any advice that could help me come to a final decision.

petes

Just don't bite off more than you can chew.

kluivert

Its hard to know, I like working for his company at the weekends, its good love and a very good working envirnoment. Everyone is dead on and easy to get on with. My good friends work in this company as well in different departments.

I think the thing is that I am good at what I do as a financial accountant and I could easily go on and do my tax exams and set up a practice of my own if I wished.

I think if I did want to work as a MA I would have to start at the bottom and work my way up, I think thats the only option really.

Carb

I left practice 3 years ago, after 3 years experience and I've never regretted it. I too had aspirations of having my own practice. It was very easy to sit in a 3 partner firm with 25 staff and a good client base and think I'd like to have this one day. Then I moved to a one partner firm with a couple of staff who was only starting off and it was an eye opener. The amount of crap work that he needed to take in was unbelievable, just to get his name out there. All the work was sole trader accounts or audit clients who only needed an audit bacuase they couldn't be bother submitting returns/accounts on time. I also wouldn't be big into networking and sweet talking obnoxious clients just to get a fee of them.

In terms of the change of work, it shouldn't be an issue for you. To change to management accounting, all you'll need is common sense. Accounting is accounting, except mangement accounts will be created in a format that provides the most useful information. In some companies, the difference between financial accounts and management accounts will be marginal. Budgeting and costing is not the rocket science that the mangement accounting books would have you believe, in most companies anyway. Most companies will already have spreadsheets and procedures for doing these anyway. Most of it comes down to understanding the company and their products.

I'm starting a new job shortly as the site accountant of a fairly large manufacturing operation. I'll be managing 6/7 staff and will be reponsible for all accounting procedures/reporting (weekly accounts:eek: ) as well as costing, budgeting, cashflow forcasting etc. They were aware before the interview that I'd no costing experience,but when it was discussed at the interview, I was told that the managers would be providing the figures that I need to put into the costing spreadsheets so its not really a big deal.

If you want to move to industry, its probably not a bad move because it sounds like you'll gain good experience and your going in above the AP/AR transactional level. Is it in an industry that you'd like to work in in the future. Your biggest decision is whether you want to work in/own a practice in the future becasue it would be harder to go back. For me, that decision was easy.

Best of luck with the decision and let us know what you decide.

kluivert

Thanks Carb for your thoughts.

I dont think it would take me long to get up to speed with things. In addition its non manufacturing industry, its actually with one of the top bookies in the country.

I have no costing experience as said above, but I wouldnt be afraid of giving it ago.

Am sure if all came to all I could do a course to refresh my costing skills, and preparing budgets and forecast etc.

I was told basicly the job would involve analysing, for example, light and heat bills for two month period and investigating any sites that where higher than others and reporting on that to the finance manager.

Ad Hoc duties such as project management would be interest in preparing costings for implementation of new computer systems fitouts to shops etc. like where talking about identifying the requirements, preparing a budget for it, looking at the alternatives and then do a report on the final cost. Then after implementation, compare budget with actual and report back to management.

Am I thinking along the right lines here??

Am just nervous about starting something new all over again, especially when I have no experience in that type of area.

Thats another point I was worried about, where would the figures come from. I was wondering would I be responsible for determining that or would that come from department managers.

Carb congrats on the new job and I hope your own project is proving successful.

Carb

I suppose the one thing to watch out for is that you don't get pigeon holed into a very niche role. You would need to have some sort of idea where you want to be going with your career, have you aspirations of been a financial controller, will this role provide the experience needed to move along this path. One of the biggest things I found companies were looking for was reporting experience, ie a large involvement in generating the monthly P&L accounts and reporting on the different variances. Budgeting, costing, cashflows were next. Levels of reponsibility were important too. Project accounting can be interesting, but it can also be very confined to the industry the expereience was gained in. If you want to work in industry, and this role will give the above experience, I'd say it'd be worth going for. Have this company outlined any kind of career plan, or how they see your role developing?

Kinetic^

Like Carb has said, it's not a million miles away from what you've been trained to do and adapting to it won't be that much of a struggle. Have they offered you the job? Is there room for progress within the company?

kluivert

I was thinking about that last point last night, is there career progression through the company - very little.

I have decided to stick it out in practice, am going to do my tax exams next October with IATI.

Go from there and obtain my practice cert.

Kinetic^

Carb wrote:

The amount of crap work that he needed to take in was unbelievable, just to get his name out there. All the work was sole trader accounts or audit clients who only needed an audit bacuase they couldn't be bother submitting returns/accounts on time. I also wouldn't be big into networking and sweet talking obnoxious clients just to get a fee of them.

It's defo going to be hard at the start and the gift of the gab is going to help you out alot. I wouldn't be into sweet talking people either, I'm a straight talker and I know clients wouldn't like that. The other thing to take into account is that people might not want to be taking advice from a young 20 something - it's ageist I know but they'd probably be more comfortable with someone who's been around a little longer.

If you do have your sights set on setting up on your own, drop the weekend job and work on your own clients then. The AITI exams will defo be a great asset too (I plan on doing them after my ACAs), especially if you intend on practiing by yourself.