Friday, February 22, 2008

A new definition about cheating

One day, in the doctoral class in one big university …..

The professor asked the student to present the paper they had prepared. While one of the students was presenting the paper, the professor was quite surprised. He thought, as if I had ever read and heard the idea.

Then he asked the student, are you sure you made the paper by yourself? Why was the paper look like similar with the paper made by your friend in the previous class. The student answered, “No Sir, It is different. Her paper has more pages than mine. More than that, I typed the paper by myself.”

Monday, January 28, 2008

Job Opportunities for An Accounting Graduate

There are many job opportunity available for an accounting graduate. Every business unit, either profit oriented or non profit oriented, either small business or big multinational company, either corporate or proprietorship, needs the accountants. Even then, many profession choices are available for an accountant. We can choose.

Here are the opportunities that are available for an accounting graduate.

  • Public Accountant.
  • Internal Auditor.
  • Management Accountant
  • Lecturer in Accounting Department
  • Business Consultant, especially in the information system development area.
  • Provider of accounting outsource services
  • Tax Consultant
  • Government Officer
  • Writer
  • Accounting Book’s Editor
Public Accountant
Prime responsibility of a public accountant is an auditing service. A public accountant is an external auditor with a responsibility to audit financial statement of a company. S/he will evaluate if the financial statement already prepared fairly according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Then, they will give opinion based on the audit evidence. To be reserved as a public accountant, an accounting graduate should pass by an examination to get a license to practice as a certified public accountant (CPA). Many CPA work independently as a single proprietor. Many others work for public accounting firms.

Internal Auditor
Internal auditor is an auditor that work for a company. Their responsibility is to make sure that accounting data is recorded correctly to guarantee the reliability of financial statement prepared. In line with that task, they have to make sure that internal control structure is well done, to minimize deliberate error, unintentional error and fraud in the company that can disturb the reliability of financial information. Good internal control structure will also help internal auditor make sure the efficiency and effectiveness of asset usage and operational activity.

Management Accountant
S/he is an accountant that performed many work for his/her company. The responsibility may include:

  • Cost Accounting—determining the cost of producing a specific product.
  • Budgeting—assisting management in quantifying goals concerning revenues, cost of good sold, and operating expense. S/he can also help management in analyzing the deviation of actual from budget.
  • General Accounting—recording daily transaction and preparing financial statement and many internal reports for internal decision maker.
  • Accounting Information System—designing both manual and computerized transaction processing system.
  • Tax Accounting—preparing tax administration and payment, and also engaging in tax planning.
Business Consultant
An accountant has special knowledge about how to record business transactions as a result the data recorded can be used to prepare many information for decision making. More, an accountant is also an expertise in understanding the internal control structure in a company. These competences will be useful in designing and developing information system for business. Thus s/he can choose to be a consultant to help company in developing information system.

Accounting Outsource Services
Many small businesses do not have enough resources to concern with bookkeeping and financial reporting preparation. The owner is already busy with operational system, buy inventory, set the price and serve the big customer. The owner also does not have extra money to hire full accountant to do the accounting job. Then, it is an opportunity that can be picked up by an accountant. S/he can give accounting outsource services.

Tax Consultant
Taxation usually is a difficult and detailed job due to taxation regulation that is established by government body. Thus, not every body has well know-how about taxation. Even, an accountant her/himself has to scrutinize every new regulation to make them up-to-date with the last taxation rule. Thus, this is also an opportunity for an accounting graduate.

Government Officer
The government in my country has a body, we call it Badan Pemeriksa Keuangan (BPK). BPK is an Indonesia government body that has a responsibility over and to manage government fund. Thus, one of the task is auditing the government departments. They need many accountants to do their job. Under Financial Department, one of the government department in my country, there is Direktorat Jenderal Pajak. Direktorat Jenderal Pajak has a responsibility to handling taxation in my country. They also need many accountants to work with taxation administration.

Lecturer in Accounting Department
An accounting graduate who like to read and to do some research can choose to work as a lecturer. There are opportunities to teach accounting course for diploma student, undergraduate student, or informal accounting course. The accountant that chooses this profession has to pursue further study.

Writer
The accountant can write a lecture book, a practical book, a news paper article, a magazine article, or a blog, like what I do. Through writing, all the know-how that is accumulated already in our mind can be poured out.

Accounting Book’s Editor
There are many book publishers. Accountant can work as an editor there, for editing accounting books.

Accounting Student: Word and Excel

I learned computer fourteen years ago. At that time, a computer was a rare product in my hometown. It was expensive. I remember my faculty bought one computer Intel 486 and maybe 4 megabyte memory around US$3000. That is why we —student— have to be satisfied with laboratory computer, an Intel 386-processor, with 1 megabyte memory.

The operation system we used was DOS and the application we learned was Word Star (as a word processing application) and Lotus 123 (as a spreadsheet application). The computers did not have hard disk, and we just used two disk drives, drive A and drive B. We inserted application software in drive A and put data disk in drive B.

One year later, I started my final paper. My research topic is about capital market, thus I had to work with many data about stock transaction volumes from many companies. I used Lotus 123 and rented a computer at the computer rental near my dorm. Remember, it was a computer with just 1 megabyte memory. The computer was easily hanging because of memory limitation. It was such a boring job, entering data then hanging. When it happened, I had to restart again and reenter the data again. Even I was afraid to type fast because the computer easily “confused.”

Two years later, I was graduated from college and started working as a research assistant. I used Lotus 123 to record all the data. It was such a challenging task to work with macro and formula in Lotus 123 to tabulate data as efficient as I can. At that time, it is already look smart just because you conquered Lotus 123 better than your friends. With my little knowledge about computer and software, it was enough for me, accounting graduate, to enter the job market.
Then, the time is passing by. As we know, everything is changing.

Along the way, during twelve years in my job, I learned about another application, like Generalized Audit Software, Accounting Package, Database Application, and Programming Application. Even then, I realized that I still have to learn more …. because what I know right now is only a little compared to what I should know as an accounting professional. The computer hardware and software development is too fast, I can not cope with it anymore.

Now, many sophisticated applications that are user friendly and ready to use is in the market. We heard about Audit Command Language as one of generalized audit software; Dec Easy Accounting, Peachtree Accounting, and MYOB as alternate accounting package that can be used by small business; SQL Server, MySQL, Microsoft Access and so on as database application. I see accounting student learned about all of it. It is become harder for them to enter the job market. Just understand Microsoft Excel (as a spreadsheet application) and Microsoft Word (as a word processor) is not enough for accounting graduate to be competitive. They need to conquer more. Why?

As we see, now, computer is not expensive anymore. Not only big company can buy and use computer, even small business can buy and use computer, if they want. With around $500, they can get Pentium IV with 256 megabyte memory. Some industries become more dependent with computer, as retail or banking industry. Computers become part of daily transaction processing. Accountant job is handling and auditing the transaction processing, how can we do our job if we do not know how to process transaction using computer?

Some university –means accounting departments– in my country, try to introduce some of those application to their student with a hope that the student can catch the basic understanding. Some students choose to study in two subject, accounting department and informatics department, either serial or parallel. Some of them even study in different university.

I see one interesting phenomena. One university in my country offers a good solution for students. Bina Nusantara (Binus) gives opportunity for students to take dual degree, accounting and informatics. With little additional money and time, the student can get two knowledge … that can not be denied, it is still a rare combination right now. One person conquers accounting and information technology. As far as I know, until now, there is no other university in my country following their strategy. Thus, Binus’ student can be proud? May be not, cause only for this time being they are better from other graduate. We do not know yet what will happen another ten years from now.

Only Good Candidate will Get a Job

There are a lot of universities in Indonesia, offering accounting subject. Want to see the universities in Indonesia, kindly visit the official website of Dirjen Pendidikan Tinggi. One university can release hundreds of accountant graduates. Thus, in one year, there will be thousands of new fresh accounting graduates. That is great.

In the other side, there are still many job opportunities for accounting graduate. I try to count the job opportunities displayed in Kompas today. I find 47 advertisements. It is not included the position that is available for graduate from every field of study. It is only accounting opportunity (including tax officer, finance staff and auditor). As a note, I do not read the line advertisement, I just read the column advertisement. Reading line advertisement can make my eyes blurred. Old eyes. Kompas is one of the Indonesian national newspapers. Every Saturday in Kompas, we will find many job opportunities for accounting graduate …. Job opportunities in Kompas do not cover up all the opportunities in Indonesia, it just part of it. Only, usually, big company will choose to advertise through Kompas, even then they also do advertise through other media. Local companies or small businesses in the province, usually choose to advertise in the local mass media or radio. Thus, Kompas is only part of all job opportunity available for new graduate.

Even then, still many of accounting graduate is jobless. How come? Even there are many job opportunity, but I guess the total job available is still lower than the total graduates every year. Thus, the company have better position to choose the best among those who applied. The competition is high and the good company is only interested with high competent accountant that is ready to enter the carrier world. Competent accountant is easy to be understood, it means that our brain should be full with A until Z of accounting. They will check our competency through our GPA (grade point average) in our transcript (I guess, three above is safe already).

Then, the part two is “ready to enter the carrier world.” This part is little difficult for me. As a student, I have more freedom, what I will wear, what time I will get up, whether I will go to campus or just walking around not attending the class, and many others. Look like little wild. The carrier world is so much different. If we choose to work in a company, it means we choose to submit ourselves to the company rule and policy. As a professional, they will ask us to come on time, to work overtime without grumbling and mumbling, to work hard, quick and efficient, to use a professional dress and also to learn something new quickly. Yes, even our grade is three points, since the first second we enter the company, we have to learn many new things. We have to learn from just small things, like filing thousand of documents, receiving a phone call, making a polite call, writing a polite email to external party or to our boss, preparing a meeting, leading a meeting; until a big thing, like learn new knowledge, learn new computer applications and many others.

Ready to enter the carrier world?

Entrepreneur Subject 4 Accounting Student

There is one interesting article published in the Kompas newspaper, Tuesday, 23 October 2007. The title is entrepreneurship can be learned. There are two important points found in the article.

First, the job opportunity is limited. If a student graduated and just think and fight to get a job, then the unemployment rate will increase. In the other hand, if a student take a decision to be an entrepreneur, at least s/he can create a job for her/him self. Further, s/he can create jobs for other people too.

Second, actually the university can take a role to encourage student to be an entrepreneur. Thus, it is important to put an entrepreneurship subject in the curriculum. Ciputra University, Surabaya and Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta includes entrepreneurship as one subject in the curriculum.

This idea is also relevant for an accounting graduate. Actually, an accounting graduate already had one half of the knowledge about managing business. Accounting student learned how to create a good accounting system for recording business transaction. They also already learned how to use the accounting information for business decision making and for evaluating the business performance. They also know how to compute tax and to fulfill tax responsibility to the government. They also know how to compute profit and loss and so and so. Any way it is just half!

To be more ready to be an entrepreneur, they need to learn other subject. They need to learn how to start a new business. What kind of regulation need to be fulfilled before running a new firm. They also need to learn how to spot a business opportunity, even how to create a new business opportunity.

Public Accountant

Prime responsibility of a public accounting firm is auditing financial statement. Audit is the accumulation and evaluation of evidence about financial information to determine whether the information prepared in accordance with the regulation and criteria set by the related body.

There are three type of audit:

Operational Audit. An evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization’s operating procedures and methods. The reviews are not limited to accounting data, they can include the evaluation of organization structure, computer operations, production methods, marketing, and any other area in which the auditor is qualified. Example is evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of a computerized point of sales system in a retail company. The evidences will be evaluated are (1) the total record processed per day, per month, and per cashier; (2) error report per day, per cashier and per month; (3) the availability of backup data; and so on. The evidence will be compared with the policy and standard set by the management.

Compliance Audit. The audit performed to determine whether the auditee is following specific procedures, rules, or regulations set by some higher authority. Example is a bank has to comply with many regulations set by Central Bank, like regulation about capital adequacy ratio. The auditor will use financial data to compute the capital adequacy ratio of the bank. Then the computed ratio will be compared with the rate set by Central Bank.

Financial Statement Audit. The audit performed to determine whether the financial statement prepared according to the generally accepted accounting principles. The evidence accumulated are the transaction documents, the records –softcopy or hardcopy–, and information from outside company.

Public accountant profession in every country takes responsibility to make sure that only competent auditor have the right to do audit. Thus, only licensed public accountant can give auditing service to the companies. They can get the licensed after they pass by an examination and fulfilled some requirement set by the profession body. As an example, in Amerika, only a person graduated from accounting major, with a minimum number of accounting credits, can follow the exam, uniform CPA (Certified Public Accountant) examination requirement. Beside that, the candidate also should have a working experience. As a note, these requirements can be vary between the state.

In the last decade, information technology development changes the auditing environment. Some company is very much dependent with technology, like bank, or airplane reservation system. Thus, some of the data and evidence is no longer paper based. Auditor has to understand database concept to extract and evaluate the financial data. Moreover, know-how about database security is also important, due to the GIGO (garbage in garbage out) nature of soft data. Thus, some new young auditors also pursue CISA (Certified Information System Auditor) certification to get assurance that they have competency in auditing in the information system environment.