Accounting

by: Hunter Richards(Guest Blogger)

Employment  in accounting is expected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to undergo “much faster than average” growth between now and 2018 - the field is resilient even in these dreary economic times. But anyone moving to a career in accounting should must gain practical skills in advance to stand out from the rest of the crowd with the best resume. The most marketable skills involve accounting software experience.

Information from five hundred randomly-selected accounting job posts from Monster.com, Career Builder, Craigslist, Simply Hired, and Accounting Jobs Today have shown which software skills employers most often desire in their new applicants. Some strategic lessons have arisen for accounting job applicants who want to find the best training and maximize their chances of landing a job.

Key Takeaways

You simply must know Microsoft Excel to even be considered as a candidate for accounting jobs. But the more sophisticated software - including deeper accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software systems - is not quite as clear. However, the key research findings have uncovered important lessons that will help you get a good accounting job:

• When finding your first job, look for a company that uses a “big name,” widely-used accounting system like SAP, Microsoft Dynamics or Oracle. That will improve your odds of getting hired next time you’re in the market for a new position.
• More and more companies are focused on business intelligence - the tools that analyze financial data to uncover business trends and opportunities. Try to gain experience in Business Objects, Crystal Reports, Cognos, etc.
• If you’re looking to work in a big corporation, you should learn systems like SAP and Oracle. If mid-size companies are your preference, learn Sage and Microsoft Dynamics. Quickbooks skills are always in demand, but especially by smaller companies.
• As the Microsoft Dynamics products converge, knowing any one of these systems will give you transferable skills across the entire Dynamics product line. For now, Dynamics GP appears to be in highest demand.
• Don’t get too comfortable with PeopleSoft or JD Edwards; although they are often mentioned by employers, they’re likely to decline in use as Oracle migrates to its Fusion apps. But it’ll take a while, so skills with these systems are still valuable.

Hunter Richards is a blogger for Software Advice, a free online resource with reviews, comparisons, and analysis of accounting software. His original article on tech skills for the accounting job hunt can be found here.

Many organizations have certain behavioral and ethical standards for its employees to follow. This is really true when you are in a very prestigious IT Consulting Company. Somehow it can be at least be tolerated if not done frequently but when it is abused and overdone…it will result in a catastrophic consequence. Companies like those in the Accounting Software Development industry needs to maintain and constantly improve lines of communications between its employees and the use of appropriate words(obscene and curse words) are not tolerated.

There are certain individuals in the industry that would find weakness of other people and use this weakness to harass that person with frequent use of jokes to express their hate towards this person using obscene and profane words very frequently. The unsuspecting victim was clueless not until he is able to see the result when his productivity was severely affected and all the odds has slowly turned against him unaware that his weakness was being attacked and taken advantage of. If you are as innocent as this person and unable to detect early the motive of these bullying individuals, it will harder for you to succeed in life.  Always remember that you as an employee is entitled to a good and proper working environment not a hostile environment. Hostile Work Environment refers to harassment or discrimination that is a violation of a person’s civil rights - based on gender, sexual orientation, race, color, nationality, ancestry, ethnic origin, religion, physical handicap/disability, medical condition, physical appearance, marital status, veteran status, education. Harassment in so may forms and variants in the office is prevalent nowadays because of resources getting scarce and some people would take advantage of any opportunity available in order to survive.

Each and everyone of us must be strong enough to fight these people by knowing the rules and if these rules are violated, do not hesitate to escalate to your superiors so that appropriate actions against the offender will be vested upon. Of course, you should be aware of office politics and gather enough evidence to support your claims. So is profanity in the workplace cool? No, of course not!

Quickstudy by Russell Kay. Computerworld (August 30, 2004). “The digital computing world is built on a structure of Boolean logic applied to binary values — one or zero, yes or no, in or out. But this powerful structure is a gross oversimplification of the real world, where many shades of gray exist between black and white. In everyday life, we use quasimetric notions that are clearly related to numerical concepts or values but lack precision or demarcation. … The real world simply doesn’t map well to binary distinctions, and numerical precision is often unhelpful in making qualitative statements. Fuzzy logic gives us a way to deal with such situations. In fuzzy systems, values are indicated by a number (called a truth value) in the range from 0 to 1, where 0.0 represents absolute falseness and 1.0 represents absolute truth. While this range evokes the idea of probability, fuzzy logic and fuzzy sets operate quite differently from probability.”

Fuzzy Logic has a wide range of application especially in solving Logistics Optimization Problems which are widely found in most Accounting Software that integrates Logistics Management. A sample  application is the distribution centers location problem which is concerned with how to select distribution centers from the potential set so that the total relevant cost is minimized. Other applications which Fuzzy Logic is used to solve the problems are depot location-allocation problems, vehicle routing problems, and inventory control problems which are three key problems in optimizing logistics distribution systems.

Fuzzy Logic requires some numerical parameters in order to operate such as what is considered significant error and significant rate-of-change-of-error, but exact values of these numbers are usually not critical unless very responsive performance is required in which case empirical tuning would determine them. Fuzzy Logic was conceptualized by  Lotfi Zadeh, a professor at the University of California at Berkley. And today, his work can be found in major Software and Hardware that solves optimization problems.

I found another very interesting way to build up your empire to increase your chance of success in your online marketing/branding effort for your Accounting Software and that is broadcasting your tweets. Like we all know, a lot of microblogging platforms are available today but then Twitter is the most popular because it is being used by almost 100 million people and still growing very very rapidly. But by far, it is just second to Facebook which is not just a microblogging platform but a full featured social networking platform which means it has a wider reach and is currently being used by more than 250 million people. LinkedIn is also a full featured networking site but has a different niche because it focuses more on building up your career. But there is one problem, all these three have very uninteresting appeal to website owners, webmasters and bloggers and that is, all of the links are nofollow which means it is worthless for SEO. But then here comes Identi.ca, a microblogging platform similar to Twitter but not as popular. The only advantage of Identi.ca over the previous three I mentioned earlier is that the links are dofollow which means it has a lot of value for SEO.

Then probably you might wonder what is the relationship of these four Social Networking/Microblogging platforms? If you look more closely, you can maximize your web presence by broadcasting your tweets into them.

The simplest way to broadcast your tweets is you enter your tweets from Hootsuite, then Hootsuite updates Ping.fm, then Ping.fm updates Identi.ca, then Indeti.ca updates your Twitter and  Twitter updates your Facebook and LinkedIn. You can also add
Twitter widgets to your website/blog and add another service like Friendfeed. I did not discussed the details on how to setup the communications between each platform but it should be easy.

Facebook, Twitter, Online Bulletin Boards has become so popular nowadays and in fact the users of these Social Media Platforms has ballooned astronomically like wow, almost close to a billion. Imagine yourself spreading some weird pictures to your Facebook wall so that your friends will enjoy looking at it, then your friends posted some comments on it, then your friends’ friends viewed it and started posting comments on it, then your friends’ friends’ friends also are able to view it and posted comments on it, and in the next 4 hours, the weird picture you posted received over a million comments because it just turned viral.

And in some ways, you become immensely popular because you are the one who posted the picture that turned viral. This is a clear and simple demonstration of how powerful Online Social Media has become.  Internet Marketers sees this as a very powerful advertisement medium more powerful than the tv/radio broadcast media and the print media. Online Social Media is more powerful because it is very interactive and everyone can participate. Some imaginative methods and techniques can be invented to enhanced the visibility of the object(I am referring to the products/services) that a company intends to promote.  One good example is to promote an Accounting Software and build a brand for it and increase people’s awareness of that brand.

Measuring/Analysis tools that uses Data Mining and Artificial Intelligence Algorithms are used by Internet Marketers to check the economic status, gender, geographic location of their audience/readers. Several Grading Systems were invented to measure the reach, influence factor, and quality of their Audience’s friends and followers to check/filter spams and robot accounts.

The most important asset of any organization is its human resource. The quantity and quality of its human resource can determine its position in the market. It is therefore important to properly monitor the performance, efficiency and improvement of processes in managing the human resources and to calculate the value and understand and interpret this value of the human resource. Very large quantity of data and sophisticated hardware is needed to keep track of progress of each monitoring system that must be put in place for Human Resources Information Systems(HRIS).

Even with the most advanced HRIS system, managing the human resource can still be difficult and tricky that is why a strategy focused approach is needed to effectively carry out the task. One of the most important module of the HRIS is the Online Reputation Manage System whose main function is to measure how people view some of the most important personalities in the organization.

Most companies need to integrate HRIS data to other systems like Accounting Software, Data Warehousing, Building Automation and Security System and in the Operating System itself to control and manage human access to certain folders and files.

We often hear about Optimization as one of the keys to ensure operational profitability, efficiency, gain more competitive advantage, accelerate growth and offers to safeguard the future of the enterprise. We all know that using the best accounting software that uses the most accurate and highly integrated processes with the aid of Artificial Intelligence algorithms is the best way to achieve this.

Based on experience, suppliers that offer the most expensive products when compared to other suppliers that offers the same products is largely due to inefficient and unoptimized logistical supports and processes. Consumers and end users are often influenced by the cost and quality of the product.

Today, there are a handful of Accounting Software companies that offer Logistics Optimization tools. These software often use mathematical modeling and optimization techniques to solve logistical challenges and industrial problems often faced by the enterprise. These software often includes strategic network optimization, supply chain planning and capacity planning.

Knowing how to work well with suppliers is an indication that your company has very good strategy in managing its Accounts Payable. Survival in a very competitive world can be very much affected by how a company manage its cash and liquidity. A very good Accounting Software should be able to provide reports with timely and accurate financial information and analysis that enables a company to gain information critical for decision-making.

Knowing the movements of a company’s cash just on a periodic basis can look deceptively calm. Accounting Software must make all the necessary data on a daily and weekly basis and should be accessible in real time to enable the company optimize the usage of their cash and provides a better way to formulate better strategies. Strategies that may not be available to the company’s competitors.

Always remember that an ineffective management of Accounts Payable can make any business run into a lot of problems like being unable to pay your suppliers on time and eventually unable to make payments required to continue your operations.

I was reviewing all the articles I created so far and one the most comprehensive topics that has been into the spot light is the Intelligent Accounting Software Design. This explains why my blog ranks really well in search engines for keywords like “intelligent accounting”, “sentence analyzer software”, etc, etc. None of such a software still exists today and will probably never be in the next 10 generations to come as it is considered the most challenging and most complicated of all Software Designs.

Our understanding of intelligence and consciousness is still considered at its early stages as ha been told by famous Philosophers. But as we all know it, there are so many limitations that our intelligence can not handle or comprehend at all that is why we need some kind of a tool to aid us in understanding these things. That’s the major application of a real intelligent software, a software that has consciousness and is able to analyze its own code and therefore capable of accelerating its own evolution much faster than how we evolve which some predicts could take place every 26,000 years and the next major evolution is coming this 2012.

If such a software exists today, I wonder how software developers and other related services could survive? Could their existence be totally wiped out or just be limited to very few individuals? But definitely the whole of mankind can reap the full benefits of having a perfect accounting software. And probably such software will enable us to design vehicles or spacecrafts that will enable us to travel to all corners of the universe. This means, money will no longer be needed, poverty can be completely eliminated and all we have to do is to keep on improving how we will live happily ever after.

So if you really want to design such a perfect software, then you should browse Intelligent Accounting Software category of my blog.  I would also do my best to create more fascinating blogs for this topic in the coming months.

Online Accounting Software or more popularly known as Hosted Accounting Software, On-Demand Accounting Software Applications or Web Hosted Accounting System enables companies to access and take advantage of the latest in financial management technologies, without the hassle of installing and managing systems themselves. This should result in huge savings allowing companies to concentrate on their core businesses without being burdened by their Accounting Software.

Ideally, Online Accounting Software should have the features of any other type of Accounting Software if not better. If possible, any customization and additional functionality request can be easily achieved on time and on the right budget. Technical Documentations, Online Training Systems and a readily available Online Technical Support should be in placed to ensure that end users will be able to get started quickly and easily adapt to the new environment.

Web Hosted Accounting Software should be able to address major issues like Data Security, because Data Security which means to keep the data safe from corruption and its accessibility is fully controlled,  is one of the worst problems and the major concerns of any organization today. Error logs, Activity Logs, Database Access Logs and all other logs should be made available upon request for Systems Audit Reports.

Accounting is basically a very systematic process of recording all of the Company’s transactions. One of the most important Accounting Processes and basically one of the most tedious and very time consuming task is the Bank Reconciliation Process if done manually. It is also one of the most important financial auditing process not to mention its whole purpose which is to detect any unauthorized withdrawals.

The process begins when a company receives a bank statement. The bank statement is a recording of all transactions of the company with the bank for a given period of time. Nowadays, bank statements can be retrieved via internet or some banks provides a service to let their clients query their database to enable the company to get their bank statements in real time. A more popular method of  fully automated and safe bank-to-company transactions is the EDI(electronic data interchange). In this way, there is no more need for human intervention. EDI is very popular because of the existing standard file format(FINSTA in EDIFACT Standards and 822 in ANSI X12) allowing several different Computer Software to communicate easily.

The company should verify the consistency and compatibility of the bank statement with its Cash Account in its general ledger and vice versa. In an Accounting Software, the process is going to be: 1) Upload the Bank Statement; 2) The software should search the journal entries for any corresponding transactions that involves the cash accounts that has not been cleared or verified. 3) Then once a corresponding journal entry has been found, the software must mark it as verified and 4) The software should be able to make the necessary adjustments automatically if there is a discrepancy between the bank statement and journal entries.

It is highly recommended that the software should be capable to monitor which journal entry has already been verified or not and should be able to display the corresponding entry in the bank statement. Custom fields to add new functionalities like if there is need to monitor where each corresponding transactions are coming from if the company has several departments, branches, subsidiaries, etc is also highly recommended but it is optional.