What does an accountant do?

An accountant is a professional who is responsible for keeping and interpreting financial records. Most accountants are responsible for a wide range of finance-related tasks, either for individual clients or for larger businesses and organizations employing them.

Accounting is a broad term that encompasses multiple different job titles and roles within organizations. With that being said, many titles have been confused with the term “accountant”, or are interchanged, when they shouldn’t be. For example, a bookkeeper is someone who focuses on recording financial transactions. Accountants, however, typically interpret financial information on top of just recording it. In short, accountants can be bookkeepers but not all bookkeepers are accountants.

Most people have heard of a CPA, which is thought of as a one-stop shop for accounting, since they specialize in many different areas of accounting. That includes bookkeeping, taxes and other financial services for people and businesses alike. An Enrolled Agent is less heard of, for example, but specializes specifically in taxes. They are required to maintain more tax knowledge than a CPA, but their knowledge is specific to taxation, and not necessarily the other areas. Other accountants provide financial services like payroll, accounts payable and receivable, and business plans, for example.

Accountants wear lots of different hats, and each type of accountant has a different specialty.

Determining which type of accountant(s) you need can be the difference between hiring the right help or wasting your money! For your accounting needs, we have specialties of many types! Contact us for more details on how we can meet your needs!