Finance Info | Real Estate Info

How do some professionals seem to get ahead with their career? Is it luck, good fortune or who they know? Well to some extent it is to do with who you know, but for most it’s because they know that you have to let people be able to offer you your next job rather than have to go and find it yourself.

If you are sought after, instead of a job seeker you can command so much more in terms of salary and remuneration package.

If you are a student for example and looking to start your career in finance or accountancy for example then you need to tell people, organizations, recruiters who you are and why they should hire you. These days it’s not enough to go through the “milk round” the best and key positions have already been snapped up.

To succeed you need to register with some key job boards. Remember though you don’t want to plaster your cv details wide and far but be careful in how you choose to distribute your CV details. So if you have been studying finance and accounts for example make sure you choose a recruiter or job board that specializes in accountancy and financial markets. A good example of a specialist jobboard is Financejobs.co.nz they specialize in NZ and AU finance and accounts jobs and have a wide range of recruiters and employers that use them to fill their job vacancies. If I was a student looking for finance work i’d register free straight away and make sure that my best CV was uploaded so employers could find me rather than wait for ad response.

The other key advice to take on board is that when you are applying for positions, to make sure that your CV is relevant to the position that you are applying for. I would highly recommend that you “design” several CV’s for the specific positions that you are interested in, use the keywords for the type of work that you “want” to do rather than leaving them out. Many recruiters will base their searches on the skills they need, by doing this you are likely to get shortlisted even if you don’t have the experience! After all if you don’t get interviews how will you get the job!

For experienced and key employee’s it may have been sometime since you were actively job seeking, I’d highly recommend keeping your options open especially if you are working in finance or accounts sectors; you can quickly find that companies are going bust, merging, or making redundancies. So get your CV updated and keep all your options open.

Resources

Finance and Accounts Career information

Personal Accounting

Mainly for home users that use accounts payable type accounting transactions, managing budgets and simple account reconciliation at the inexpensive end of the market suppliers include:

Low End

At the low end of the business markets, inexpensive applications software allows most general business accounting functions to be performed. Suppliers frequently serve a single national market, while larger suppliers offer separate solutions in each national market.

Many of the low end products are characterized by being “single-entry” products, as opposed to double-entry systems seen in many businesses. Some products have considerable functionality but are not considered GAAP or FASB compliant. Some low-end systems do not have adequate security nor audit trails.

Mid Market

The mid-market covers a wide range of business software that may be capable of serving the needs of multiple national accountancy standards and allow accounting in multiple currencies.

In addition to general accounting functions, the software may include integrated or add-on management information systems, and may be oriented towards one or more markets, for example with integrated or add-on project accounting modules.

Software applications in this market typically include the following features:

• Industry-standard robust databases (eg PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle, Pervasive)
• Industry-standard reporting tools (eg Cognos, Crystal)
• Tools for configuring or extending the application (eg an SDK, access to program code, the ability to be controlled via Visual Basic for Applications (VBA))

High End

The most complex and expensive business accounting software is frequently part of an extensive suite of software often known as Enterprise resource planning or ERP software.

These applications typically have a very long implementation period, often greater than six months. In many cases, these applications are simply a set of functions which require significant integration, configuration and customisation to even begin to resemble an accounting system.

The advantage of a high-end solution is that these systems are designed to support individual company specific processes, as they are highly customisable and can be tailored to exact business requirements. This usually comes at a significant cost in terms of money and implementation time.

Vertical Market

Some business accounting software is designed for specific business types. It will include features that are specific to that industry.

The choice of whether to purchase an industry-specific application or a general-purpose application is often very difficult. Concerns over a custom-build application or one designed for a specific industry include:

• Smaller development team
• Increased risk of vendor business failing
• Reduced availability of support

This can be weighed up against:

• Less requirement for customisation
• Reduced implementation costs
• Reduced end-user training time and costs

Some important types of vertical accounting software are:

• Banking
• Construction
• Medical
• Nonprofit
• Point of Sale (Retail)

Hybrid Solutions

As technology improves, software vendors have been able to offer increasingly advanced software at lower prices. This software is suitable for companies at multiple stages of growth. Many of the features of Mid Market and High End software (including advanced customization and extremely scalable databases) are required even by small businesses as they open multiple locations or grow in size. Additionally, with more and more companies expanding overseas or allowing workers to home office, many smaller clients have a need to connect multiple locations. Their options are to employ software-as-a-service or another application that offers them similar accessibility from multiple locations over the internet.

Accounting software is application software that records and processes accounting transactions within functional modules such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, and trial balance. It functions as an accounting information system. It may be developed in-house by the company or organization using it, may be purchased from a third party, or may be a combination of a third-party application software package with local modifications. It varies greatly in its complexity and cost.

The market has been undergoing considerable consolidation since the mid 1990s, with many suppliers ceasing to trade or being bought by larger groups.