A senior accountant is a specialist who takes into account the financial and economic activities of an enterprise. It controls how economically the organization uses material, labor and other types of resources, while maintaining the ownership of the company. To get this position, you must have experience in accounting.
This position is not the final step of the career ladder. Upon gaining experience and additional education, a specialist can count on the position of financial director. More detailed information is contained in the job description of a senior accountant. In the sample document you can find all the necessary information.
Provisions
The specialist is appointed by the director of the company on the recommendation of the chief accountant, to whom he subsequently must obey. This employee is a professional. To get this job, the applicant must have a higher economic or professional education. In addition, he is obliged to work in an appropriate position in the accounting field for at least two years.
As indicated in the job description of the senior accountant, he is obliged to take into account, when performing his work, accounting accounting rules, normative and legal acts, as well as instructions and recommendations directly related to reporting work and accounting. He must also take into account organizational, administrative and other documents of the organization, local acts and the rules of the institution where he is employed.
What is responsible for?
This employee is responsible for the fact that all the work entrusted to him by senior management must be done in a timely manner and at the right level of quality. He must monitor compliance with labor and executive discipline. In addition, the job description of the senior accountant assumes that this employee is responsible for maintaining information and company documents that contain information subject to trade secrets or other confidential data.
This also includes the personal data of all subordinate employees provided to him to carry out the duties assigned to him. He supports and ensures that labor standards, order and enforcement of company rules are respected.
Knowledge
The job description of the senior accountant assumes that the employee, starting his duties, is familiar with the current legislation of the country regarding accounting, the basics of civil law, as well as with financial, economic and tax laws. He must study the methodological and regulatory documentation that affects his activities.
The employee must know the organization of accounting, its rules, codes of ethics, corporate governance methods, all types of accounting, including statistical, tax and management. In addition, according to the job description of the senior accountant, he must familiarize himself with the profile, specialization and structure of the company where he is employed, examine the prospects and strategies for its development.
Other knowledge
The specialist should know how the accounting operations are properly executed, and the organization of the circulation of documentation for the accounting sections takes place, how shortages, receivables and other losses are written off from the accounts. He must understand how to process the acceptance, posting, storage and spending of the company's financial savings, inventory, and everything else that is necessary for auditing and tax audits. He is obliged to study how financial calculations are carried out correctly, what taxation conditions exist, how to properly conduct inventories, settle accounts with creditors and debtors, and carry out checks and revisions of documentation.
The job descriptions of the chief accountant of the LLC are based on the fact that he knows the methods of analysis of the economic and financial activities of the organization, how IP, OJSC and LLC are registered, how to properly store accounting documents and protect information. The specialist must constantly monitor the best foreign and domestic experience in organizing accounting. It is also assumed that he knows the organization of production, economics, management, legislation at the proper level, and possesses theoretical and practical skills in using computer technology.
Functions
The job description of the senior accountant according to the professional standard assumes that the following functions are entrusted to him, namely the performance of work related to the organization and maintenance of accounting on the site of the company entrusted to him. Also in his job functions includes the management of subordinate employees of this department, the organization of their activities. He must ensure the entry of data on business transactions, movement of assets, income and expenses, fulfilled obligations in the accounts of accounting, and to do this accurately and in a timely manner.
Responsibilities
The main duties of the chief accountant include the preparation of information on the activities of the company so that they could be used to prepare reports, track the safety of documentation, and execute its design in accordance with norms and standards, for further transfer to the archive.
He is obliged to accept and control the primary documentation, as well as prepare it for accounting. This employee is engaged in the production and maintenance of accounting, which includes operations with taxes, fees to budgets, payments to financial institutions, payroll and more. He checks the data with external organizations that relate to financial transactions, conducts work on inspections that are carried out by government bodies in order to control accounting.
Other functions
An employee may be assigned the responsibility of developing work plans of accounts, primary documentation forms, which are used to formalize the company's business activities. It is this employee who is engaged in determining the basic methods and techniques of accounting and technological processing of organization documents. The duties of the chief accountant of the enterprise include the formation, maintenance and storage of the database, its use and reporting.
He should be involved in the development of activities that help educate lower-level employees on how to properly comply with financial discipline and exploit company resources. He takes part in the formation of an information system for reporting and accounting, in accordance with norms and standards. And also participates in financial analysis and tax policy creation based on the collected data, through an internal audit in the company. He is developing plans for how to improve the efficiency of the organization, to minimize losses and non-production costs in the company.
Other duties
The job descriptions of the chief accountant of a budget institution usually include an item such as the obligation to provide the management of the company, its auditors, investors, creditors and other interested parties with information and reporting regarding the accounting activities of the company.
This employee should take part in the economic analysis of the organization in order to discover reserves within the company, control savings, and develop a more advanced workflow. In addition, his responsibilities include the introduction of modern accounting methods and forms, taking into account modern technological and theoretical developments and best practices in this field. He is engaged in formulating the economic delivery of tasks or their specific stages, which are solved using ready-made projects, computer technology, application programs, algorithms and other tools that allow you to create systems for processing the necessary information.
Tasks
A sample job description of the chief accountant may contain a clause indicating that the employee is obliged to provide methodological assistance to the company’s employees with regard to accounting issues. The employee must ensure the timely preparation of reporting documentation, which relates to budget execution, cost estimates, all types of reporting. He must also control that all information and documents are sent to the controlling state bodies on time. If necessary, the employee can be left at the workplace overtime if circumstances so require, but only if it complies with the norms of the current legislation.
Rights
The official rights of the chief accountant include the receipt by the employee of all the documents and information that he needs to complete the tasks assigned to him. An employee has the right to interact both with employees of other departments of the organization where he is employed, and with representatives of third-party organizations if it is necessary to solve operational issues, but his actions should not go beyond his competence. Also, the employee has the right to represent the interests of the company in third-party institutions on issues that directly relate to his activities.
Responsibility
The job description of the chief accountant of the institution assumes that for his actions the employee may bear administrative, material, disciplinary and criminal liability. He can be attracted for failure to fulfill his duties, including for ignoring the management and methodological documentation of the institution. If he ignores the instructions of his superiors, illegally uses his powers or exploits the company's resources for personal purposes. He is responsible for providing false information about the work performed, for violation of labor discipline. He is responsible for the fact that his subordinates violate labor discipline and company rules.
Conclusion
All the information necessary for the employee to begin to fulfill his duties is contained in the job description of the senior accountant. A sample of this document provides only general information that may vary depending on the activities of the company where the person is employed, its scale and location. In addition, it all depends on the staff, the leadership needs for a specialist of one orientation or another and many other factors. It is important that this legal document should be prepared in strict accordance with the current legislation of the country, and not go beyond the law.
The employee has the right to begin his duties only after the approval of this document with the senior management. In other words, only after a clear definition of what exactly are the requirements for the applicant for this position, what skills and knowledge he should possess, and also when he is assured that he is familiar with his duties, rights and responsibilities, he can begin to work. It is recommended to coordinate this issue very carefully so that in the future there will be no problems and misunderstandings with the higher management. The employee must clearly understand what his role in the company is and what is required of him. And also clearly understand the degree of responsibility for the work performed.