Accounting Vs. Finance. Which Career Choice is better? #Finance

what are the differences between a career in Accounting and a career in Finance this is the topic of this CashNews.co welcome back guys my name is

Bill Hanna and I’m the Financial Controller and this channel is all about giving you the tools and tips to supercharge your Accounting and Finance

career the good news is that the job market for Accounting and Finance is expected to grow at a pace of about 6% annually for the next 10 years and so this

is an exciting time for you to get into Accounting and Finance and grow your career now let’s get into the differences between

Accounting and Finance as a career and the difference number one has to do with the goal what’s the goal of a financial accountant versus the goal of a

financial analysts the goal of the accountant is to get the data in and create Financial Statements and so the accountant is concerned with gathering the transactions of the business and creating Financial Statements as opposed to the goal of a financial analyst

which is to analyze this data and look at it from this point in time forward and project out the performance of the business the second difference has to do with the nature of the work so the accountants work by definition or by nature is looking at the past at the history and gathering the

financial data and information and summarizing that into Financial Statements now the financial analyst is concerned with the future so they are always looking at this point in time going forward and Forecasting the performance of the business the third difference

has to do with the risk what risk is the accountant trying to mitigate all the time and concern with all the time and the risk here is a risk of material misstatement that is the Financial Statements that the accountant is producing has a material misstatement or error this is

opposed to the risk that the financial analyst is dealing with which is the risk between a variance between what they are projecting for the future and reality so our financial analyst is always making assumptions about the future and the risk here is that some of these assumptions may be wrong

difference number four between an accountant and a financial analyst has to do with the type of problems you’re trying to solve and so typically an accountant is trying to solve problems around accruals Revenue recognition making sure the accrues for expenses that have not

yet impacted the cash balance but the service has been incurred or booking Revenue in the right period and just generally following US GAAP which is generally accepted Accounting principles now the kind of problems the financial analyst will be dealing with will to

do with modeling and creating assumptions about the future such as seasonality customer behavior and customer loss or churn in the future the first number five has to do with compensation in the u.s. in 2019 the median salary for an accountant was 71 thousand dollars a year which is not too bad

compared to a financial analyst which had a median salary of 86 thousand dollars a year and so as you can see there’s about $15,000 gap which is about 15 to 20 percent difference between what accountants and financial analysts the first number six has to do with certification now the gold

standard for accountants is to become a certified public accountant or CPA now I’m a CPA myself and for sure had a huge impact on my career increase my salary increase my credibility and just have been a huge impact in my life studying for and passing the CPA exam has been one of the most

difficult tasks that I had to endure in my professional life but lucky for me I found out about Roger CPA Review which is my opinion the best review course out there for CPA exam so if you’re preparing for the CPA or if you are taking a different course right now and looking for an

alternative I highly recommend Roger his style of teaching is highly energetic my biggest problem was studying for the CPA is the material is extremely boring and Roger has a way of making it very exciting and very interesting so I’m gonna leave a link down below in the description for a

promotion that Roger is running right now for his CPA review class make sure if you sign up for the course of sign up using this link so I can get the referral Credits now let’s look at the day in the life of an accountant versus a day in the life of a financial analyst and I

think the best way is to look at a month in the life versus a day in the life because a month will give you a better view on what’s going on in each of their professions for the accountant their months usually begins with the first 7 days of trying to close the period and so that will entail

billing going over invoices from vendors making sure we’re booking all of the expenses even though we have not received the vendor invoice yet accruing for these expenses and things like that and that will entail having meetings with within the accountant team and the meetings probably you

spend the 25% of your time in meetings trying to close the books and trying to make sure you’re following all the rules comparing period over period in terms of expenses and Revenue to make sure you’re catching any anomalies now if you compare that to the month in the

life of a financial analyst you’ll see that a financial analyst spends maybe about 56 to 60% of their time in meetings and now their meetings are different the accountants meetings are usually internal their bidding within the Accounting team most of the time for the

financial analyst most of the time they’re meeting with other people within the company from the sales team to go over Revenue forecasts and assumptions or meeting with the operation team and trying to capture the forecasts for expenses and things like that now there are

three reasons for me to choose Accounting / Finance as a career the first of which is my own personality as an introvert and so I interact with my smaller

Accounting team most of the time and I interact with the larger group and the company from Revenue and operations on a smaller scale so most of the time I’m just interacting with five or six people within my own team and I spend small amount of time

interacting with the rest of the company and that suits my personality more as an introvert I think that Finance suits more a extrovert type personality where you’ll be

spending most of your time interacting with people from all around the company now the second reason for me to choose Accounting was that it’s rule-based and so when it’s rule-based I have a set of rules to follow and I know what I’m doing exactly so I have rules

which is for Accounting its US GAAP which is in the u.s. generally accepted Accounting principles and as long as I’m operating within these rules I know that I’m doing the right thing and there’s no ambiguity it’s mostly black and white

there’s a little bit of gray but mostly black and white and so this is what I enjoy the most and that’s why I chose Accounting now the third reason for me to choose Accounting / color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance has to do with the stress level I believe that the stress level from working in Accounting is lower than none;">Finance the reason being is that you are concerned with two things in Accounting which is accuracy and timeliness and as long as you’re accurate in financials that your reporting and the timing of these of the reporting you will be fine whereas in

Finance there are other factors from outside that can impact your work because you’re always making assumptions about the future and these assumptions may change and so

there will be a variance between you projection and reality so I hope this CashNews.co gives you a good overview and the differences between a career and Accounting and a career in text-decoration: none;">Finance I’d like to hear any questions if you have any questions for me in the comment section below or if you want to tell us your own experience and major in Accounting or in

style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance and your career in general feel free to leave a comment below if you liked this CashNews.co please give a thumbs up and if you haven’t subscribed to my channel please hit the subscribe button and the

notification bills so that you don’t miss out on any of the CashNews.cos that I put out weekly as always stay well and I’ll see you in the next CashNews.co