Calling all Accountants, Auditors, and Fund Managers!

Your all proably sick of my endlessly precise questions at this stage! But having read so much about college courses, professional exams and the like; I would really like to know what the different jobs are like. So could anyone who is/was/knows some how is answer some questions on the followng jobs:

Management Accountant
Financial Accountant
Fund Manager
Treasury Accountant
Audit Senior

and my (long) list of (stupid) questions are:

1) What is that?
2) What sort of working hours do is the norm?
3) Whats the typical day (I know - a dangerous question!)? What do you actually do.. like I know you sit behind a desk, have a computer a hell of a lot of bits of paper - but what do you actually do all day?
4) Do you enjoy it? why?
5) What route did you take; degree, then ACCA, ICAI...?
6) Do you work in practice, or for a company?
7) Is there an incrediably amount of difficult maths involved? or is it more interpetation and analysis of reports and accounts?
8) How much independent work do you do? Do you have a boss who gives you a set workload or do you work largely on your own?
9) Oh and what does a Newly Qualified Accountant actually do.. I see so many ads for them...

Thanks so much everyone; feel free to answer any question if you can.

I'm pretty sure that (1) could be answered by searching the web for information and that (9) could be answered by checking the salary surveys of the various recruitment agencies that are online.

Have you checked out [broken link removed]?

Marion

I've been true career directions, and have a general idea of what the above do - but its difficult to actually understand what people actually do day to day. What does a fund manager actually do on a Monday morning?

he probably has a coffee and a doughnut!!!!!!!! and a chat about the weekend possibly, all jobs are similiar on a monday morning Id say!!!

My gut feeling is that you are tending to overanalyse your future career options. There are probably as may different job descriptions out there with differing roles, responsibilities and tasks as there are jobs. Beside the nature of most job positions change regularly with the introduction of new technology. Just because a fund manager has to perform a certain task today doesn't mean that that task won't be obsolete in five years time.

Don't worry im not overanalyseing things - im just asking a few questions to gain a better understanding of whats out there.. unfortunately nobody has been able to tell me anything useful so (apart from that they eat doughnut! - thanks Ikeano - I love doughnuts!)

Basically & very simplistically:

Management accountant usually works in an industrial environment and deals with costing/budgeting & projections relating to the factory output. Usually have studied CIMA.

Financial accountant can work in industry/commerce/finance but is concerned with the finance of the operation - ie - could work in the same company as the management accountant but would be dealing with the P&L/Balance sheet - the financial results of the factory production. Usually studied ACCA/ACA.

Fund manager - Looks after a portfolio of investments for pension or investment funds - could have trained as accountant but most direct qualification would be investment analysis/business degree background.

Treasury accountant - looks after the accounting records of a dealing desk/treasury operation. Quite mathematical job & may have accounting qualification or strong maths background.

Audit senior - trainee accountant (usually ACA) with an audit firm, usually has completed or nearing completion of exams. Usually would be out of the office in a client's office examining their accounting records.

Thing to remember is that whatever job you start in doesn't condemn you to stay in that area forever - many people could have worked in 3 or 4 of these areas before they are out of their 20's!

Thanks Gab, thats exactly what I was looking for; anyone else with any comments, please let me know.

I'll suggest to include the following into ur list: (for these careers u hav to move to london and most Investment Banks have seperate programme for ACAs)
Investment banking - Salary £50K + 100% bonus
Corporate Finance - £50K + 80-90% bonus
Private Equity - u need atleast 1 yr exp in the above, 65k + 120% bonus
Capital markets - DCM/ECM - £48K + 90% bonus
Debt financing (infrastructure/leveraged/structured/project finance) - same as corporate finance salaries

Obviously u need to be big-four first-time qualified ACA. And the hours in really long. Only if u r career focussed.......

A friend of mine is a Fund Accountant. He does not have an accounting or business background. He was worked for two companies, both would be very well known in the funds industry.

He tells me his job is basically an admin job. Adding up figures, doing reports. No skills are required, except for basic computer skills.

It's a reasonably well paid job which can be picked up in a week or two.

For the record, the firms require you have a business degree, but he just pretends he does. Unethical yes, but for the job it really makes no difference.

Wow, thanks lads... this topic is over a year old! A lot has happened since! I'm now doing first year Accountancy & Finance in Dublin City University and love it!