Why Is Accounting So Important?

The significance of accounting has never been more apparent than in today’s market, with the struggling economy and the job market in decline.  Though the loss of jobs may be happening in many fields the one that continues to stay strong is accounting.  The reasons for this are the same reasons that accounting is such an important aspect in the economy and in society.

                Before we can begin to understand the importance of accounting, we first must understand what accounting is.  Accounting can be defined as the theory and system of setting up, maintaining, and auditing the books of a firm.  It is the art of analyzing the financial position of a business through its sales, purchases, and overhead.  These records must be kept in chronological order and must be summarized in a useful format.   It is also responsible for identifying information on the transactions, analyzing it and then interpreting each and every document.

                Now that we have begun to understand what accounting means we can begin to examine how important accounting really is.  The first way in which it is important is that an accounting education can be applied to any job industry.  For instance a secretary uses accounting in managing a company’s check book.  Also the executives of this same company must be able to analyze the success of their business through analyzing the accounting statements from the past and present.  These are just two of the many job positions found in any company that must have some knowledge of accounting.  Another reason that accounting is important to all business majors is because of the fact that the business world has now come under much scrutiny.  As a result they are held much more accountable for their financial practices.  This has occurred because of the events of the Enron and WorldCom scandals.  For this reason nearly all businesses require their employees to have a general knowledge of accounting.

                Another way in which accounting is such an important aspect to any business is that accountants are responsible for providing information that is used to determine the present and future economic stability of the organization.  It has been proven that these companies that use good accounting practices have a competitive advantage over their opponents.  Also they have the ability to improve their decision making abilities.   Those that do not use these practices face an inability to compete in the market and make their decisions simply on a hunch.

                Not only is accounting very important in the business world it is also beneficial for ordinary people to know as well.  Each and every person uses these accounting skills in their daily lives when making financial investment decisions.  They also use it when assessing their interest rates in order to pay off their house mortgages.  The final way in which they can use these skills is to balance their check books and to calculate the rates of their car payments.

Within the accounting department can be found the forensic accountants these are individuals who use the audit and investigative skills to assist in legal matters and to make recommendations in order to minimize future risks.  Their jobs also can be extended into civil matters, for instance to find any hidden assets in certain divorce cases.  These individuals are just as important as regular accountants because of the fact that they are also in very high demand.  The reason though that their jobs are so important is because of the fact that fraud is becoming much easier to commit.  These actions are a result of the fact that technology has increased significantly and that gives people individuals the ability to commit fraud on a massive scale and get away with it very easily.

The significance of accounting not only is clearly vital in the business world but it also can be shown that it plays a part on the individual scale as well.  For these reasons and many more it can be shown that accounting clearly is if not close to the most important skill in todays’ society and will continue to be in the future. 

Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 – First Look


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The Time Accounting module is for maintaining a time card based on Projects and Tasks. Once correctly setup, the tool can, in addition to the working units in OTRS, be a great controll point for managers and company owners, not only for billable hours, but for personnal management. This short video will help you understand and setup the basics.
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Survival Tips for the New Sales Manager

Survival Tips for the New Sales Manager

When I was a young, sales manager it was not really that hard to be good—even great. The recipe for “good” back then was fairly simple: work long hours, teach some type of sales strategy (by example) and occasionally have a pep talk with your team. If you wanted to be “crazy good” you held a sales meeting once a week, worked individually with reps and devised some type of incentive for getting people to do pretty much whatever you wanted. Sure there were challenges and competition and the need to get traffic through the door but somehow we overcame it all and were able to succeed and prosper with a fairly uncomplicated process. That was a long time ago.

Being great in today’s market comes with many of the same challenges as before—but they are challenges on steroids. Today’s sales manager must contend with tough competition, generational issues, a much more sophisticated buyer, a volatile economy and deal with major management and corporate office changes with regularity. Today’s sales manager must be a disciplinarian, a therapist and a recruiter–not to mention a stickler for managing by the numbers.

Can it Be Done?

So is it impossible to be a great sales manager? Absolutely not! There are definite strategies that can be employed to ease the challenges facing today’s managers. The modern-day sales managers must learn to be supreme sorters among the endless to-do lists that threaten to overwhelm them and must also learn to embrace change—to name a few. While we cannot cover ALL of strategies in the scope of this article—we can certainly hit on a few that might make an immediate difference.

Coping With Change-Whoever said “Change is Good” was on crack. (Actually I think it was President JFK –so no disrespect intended). Change is great until it happens to you. Departmental reorganizations, budget cuts, mergers, acquisitions and new bosses can rattle even the most solid among us. Even seemingly “smaller” changes like delays in a promised promotion, or a change in comp plan we have to sell to our team, or even a marketing strategy we completely disagree with, can be rattling because they have a direct effect on our jobs. It can feel like gut-punch and frankly being punched can elicit all kinds of inappropriate responses from us. So the next time you get hit by an email or piece of news you do not like do three things:

First: Do nothing. That’s right. Do nothing at all. Don’t send the email, the announcement, the letter or have that conversation. Just take it in. Do nothing. You need a day to think about this if you don’t have a day, take an hour a minute or a walk. But do nothing with your first impulse.

Second: De-personalize the situation. While this dramatically affects you; it is not necessarily about you. Chances are this change is part of a much bigger issue that you may not have the details about—and likely never will. Try and imagine what those issues might be. Your next move will be a lot smarter, more tactical and strategically beneficial to you if you can take your personal feelings out of the equation.

Third: Make a list of what you believe in. Not what you think or do—what you believe. And not just work beliefs—true, deep down, life beliefs. What do you believe about adversity? About change? About integrity? Now is your chance to live by those beliefs and make your next move.

The bottom line with change is that you need to get yourself into a state of mind where you expect it, deal with it and even welcome it. To accomplish this you must have a strategy for coping–otherwise the stress will kill you or will certainly impair your ability to succeed.

Combating the Overwhelm-If you have been staring through your computer or wandering around aimlessly lately you might be in a state of overwhelm. Check your Thesaurus for other words to describe the feeling and you will find: confounded, dismayed, dumbfounded, shocked, and thunderstruck among them. Anyone who as ever been overwhelmed knows that overwhelm leads to paralysis and paralysis in sales equals failure. Try these 3 steps:

1. One of the best strategies for dealing with overwhelm is to start by making the longest to-do list known to man. When I am overwhelmed I write down literally any item floating in my mind. If I am particularly breathless with To-dos I will take out several note pads (or Word documents) and categorize them by month or department or client or whatever. Just get it down on paper.

2. Next prioritize the list by writing down the top 5 things you MUST accomplish to be a success right now. The truth is that we all have way too much to do and telling ourselves that everything is of equal importance only makes things worse. Look closely at that list and ferret out the items that will directly affect sales, client or employee retention, morale, reporting and profitability. Chances are, if you succeed at the critical items on your list the other things will fall into place or fall away.

3. Once you have your list it is time to ORGANIZE your world. There is almost no chance that you are totally overwhelmed and working at a clean desk with organized files, a tidy home and a clean car. What is more likely is that you have fallen way behind on these items and the disorganization is adding to your sense of overwhelm. Take your anger out on your office. Clean it up, organize it and rearrange it and THEN attack that to do list.

Much of what it takes to survive and thrive in today’s workforce falls under the category of perspective. You need perspective to remind yourself that not every change is about you. You need perspective to sort through the increasing number of things that are now “your job” and do what really, really matters first and you need the perspective to know that you got this job by succeeding at something and you can succeed at this too.