WHAT DOES A CORPORATE ACCOUNTANT DO?

Published: August 16, 2024 - The Corporate Accountant ensures timely delivery of month-end financial reports, analyzes and reconciles general ledger accounts, and prepares accurate journal entries. The role supports the adoption of new accounting standards, assists with external audits, and maintains fixed asset schedules. Additionally, the accountant aids in tax filings and compliance and serves as backup for Accounts Payable and Receivable functions.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Corporate Accountant

1. Corporate Accountant Duties

  • Cash Transaction Management: Daily balancing and recording of cash transactions.
  • Account Reconciliation: Reconcile various general ledger cash accounts and subsidiary records.
  • Financial Forecasting Assistance: Assist in preparing budgeting, forecasting, cash flow projections, and financial analysis reports in the context of annual, quarterly, and monthly forecasting.
  • Global Cash Management: Lead the global cash forecasting and planning process and ensure the company’s global cash obligations are met in a cost-effective manner.
  • Account Analysis: Analyze various account balances and prepare adjusting journal entries.
  • Technology Optimization: Seek to optimize the use of technology to improve efficiency and reduce waste.
  • Financial Reporting Support: Support the preparation of required periodic financial reports for management and external financial reports.
  • Deadline Adherence: Provide timely support of accounting calendar deadlines.
  • Audit Preparation: Maintain books and records in an audit-ready condition: organized, visible, clear, and concise.
  • Audit Response: Support and respond to internal and external audit requests.
  • Cross-Training Engagement: Engage in cross-training to ensure appropriate backups are in place and work instructions are documented.
  • Documentation Maintenance: Maintain appropriate documentation to provide evidence of control effectiveness, including seeking written approval as appropriate on transactions performed.

2. Corporate Accountant Details

  • Budgeting and Planning: Prepares budgets, medium-term plans (MTP), and reforecasts for overheads, fixed assets, and financial income/expense.
  • Payroll Accounting: Handles payroll and bonus accounting and reconciliation.
  • Financial Analysis: Conducts balance sheet revaluation and analysis of FX movement.
  • Hedge Effectiveness Testing: Performs Net Investment of Foreign Operations and Overheads Hedges effectiveness testing and documentation.
  • Financial Reporting: Analyzes and reports on financial income/expense, including appropriate month-end accruals.
  • Overheads Management: Manages overheads accruals and prepayments, including analysis and reporting.
  • Asset Management: Oversees fixed asset and depreciation accounting and analysis.
  • Headcount Management: Conducts headcount reconciliation, analysis, and reporting.
  • Data Integrity: Periodically substantiates ledger balances to ensure data integrity.
  • Regulatory Compliance: Develops and maintains an understanding of external financial reporting and disclosure requirements to ensure proper recording of business activities in accordance with these requirements.
  • Process Optimization: Works with internal business contacts to optimize efficiency of corporate accounting processes.
  • Project Participation: Participates in special projects and performs other duties.

3. Corporate Accountant Responsibilities

  • Management Accounts: Monthly management accounts and reconciliation of balance sheet schedules.
  • Year-End Reporting: Year-end reporting and preparation of audit files.
  • Payroll Accounting: Manage payroll and the associated accounting/reporting requirements.
  • Payroll Review: Review offsite staff payroll.
  • Employee Tax Submission: Produce and submit employees' P11d to HMRC.
  • Expense Analysis: Analyze staff expenses to ensure claims are made in line with the company’s policy.
  • Transaction Resolution: Investigate and resolve unsettled transactions.
  • Financial Reporting: Provide monthly & ad hoc financial reporting.
  • Payment Processing: Conduct periodic payment runs & ad hoc payments.
  • Invoice Handling: Process invoices and credit notes.
  • Fee Scheduling: Liaise with various departments to produce scheduled fees.
  • Compliance Checks: Perform KYC/Money Laundering checks and new client registration.
  • Supervisory Role: Supervise and review the work of the Accounts Assistant.

4. Corporate Accountant Accountabilities

  • Monthly Close Execution: Executes the full range of monthly accounting close activities for assigned functional areas, including review, analysis, and measuring of economic activities, ensuring the proper recording of financial activities according to international accounting and reporting standards, statutory reporting requirements, and Corporate policies.
  • General Ledger and Journal Management: Prepares monthly general ledger account reconciliations and reviews, approves, and posts journal entries.
  • Financial Analysis: Analyzes domestic and international business operations, trends, costs, revenues, financial commitments, and obligations to ensure accurate recording of financial position.
  • Financial Reporting Assistance: Assists in the preparation and communication of monthly financial results to accounting operations management.
  • Issue Resolution: Works with internal business contacts to research issues, develop recommendations, and resolve routine issues.
  • Internal Controls Design: Assists in recommendations, design, and implementation of internal control procedures that ensure proper recording and reporting of financial position and prevent significant errors in accounting records and process changes to improve accuracy, consistency, and efficiency.
  • Documentation and Communication: Documents all modifications and communicates to manager and appropriate internal clients.
  • Audit and Financial Statement Support: Provides support for quarterly financial statements and annual external audit.
  • Accounting Support: Prepares all assigned responsibilities by the dates and provides accounting support to internal business contacts.
  • Corporate Financial Relationships Knowledge Development: Develops and maintains a working knowledge of legal and accounting relationships between the parent and its subsidiaries, relationships and agreements between subsidiaries, and relationships and agreements between the parent and its affiliates and other areas in corporate financial services (e.g., financial reporting, accounts payable, procurement, payroll, billing and receivables, treasury, tax, and financial service teams).

5. Corporate Accountant Functions

  • Closing Process Assistance: Assist in the month-end, quarter-end, and year-end close process.
  • Journal Entry Management: Prepare, code, and record journal entries in GL.
  • Allocation Processing: Process allocations and reclassification entries.
  • Interdepartmental Collaboration: Work closely with A/R, A/P, Payroll, Master Data, Fixed Assets, and Lease Accountant.
  • Account Reconciliation: Prepare account reconciliation activities.
  • Trial Balance Review: Review trial balance and reconcile/analyze all general ledger accounts.
  • Audit Support: Provide audit support specific to general accounting.
  • Internal Control Monitoring: Monitor and execute internal control procedures to ensure that company assets are adequately protected.
  • Expense Review Assistance: Assist in the review of department expenses by working closely with department heads, enhancing process standardization.
  • Process Improvement Participation: Participate in and support various process improvement initiatives.
  • Daily Journal Entries: Daily preparation and recording of journal entries.
  • Bank Reconciliations: Perform monthly bank reconciliations.
  • Loans and Securities Reconciliations: Perform monthly loans and securities reconciliations.

6. Corporate Accountant Job Description

  • Financial Reporting: Provides financial information to management and prepares reports.
  • ERP Integration: Integrates accounting procedures and activities from stand-alone accounting software into the ERP system.
  • Bill Payment Processing: Processes and pays incoming bills, including expenses and credit cards.
  • Invoice Management: Sends out invoices to customers and collects payments.
  • Payroll Management: Manages payments of payrolls and coordinates with HR.
  • Bookkeeping and Reconciliation: Handles bookkeeping with month-end reconciliation and prepares financial statements.
  • Amortization and Inventory Tracking: Tracks amortization and controls inventory.
  • External Coordination: Coordinates with external fiduciaries for consolidation.
  • Transaction Support: Supports specific transaction accounting.
  • Quality System Maintenance: Contributes to maintaining and improving the quality system to comply with all applicable regulations and standards, especially with ISO 9001.
  • Accounts Receivable Management: Manages quarterly accounts receivable billing.
  • Financial Statement Preparation: Prepares annual legal entity financial statements for tax return purposes.
  • Financial Documentation: Prepares step memos and fund flows for large or complex transactions.

7. Corporate Accountant Overview

  • Financial Transactions Management: Focuses on debt and equity transactions, fund portfolio analysis, month-end close, reconciliations, and data integrity.
  • Partner Interaction: Regularly interacts with joint venture partners.
  • Management Communication: Establishes open communication with District management and ensures complete transparency from both sides with respect to local profit and loss.
  • Management Resource: Acts as a resource for management in assigned district(s), communicates, educates, and provides guidance to local management regarding all accounting-related issues.
  • Compliance Control: Maintains control procedures to ensure compliance with GAAP and Company policies.
  • Accounting Analysis: Analyzes weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual accounting reports.
  • Journal Entry Origination: Originates Company journal entries using accepted general ledger entry techniques.
  • Closing Process Management: Performs the monthly, quarterly, and annual closing processes for assigned district(s).
  • Process Evaluation and Improvement: Evaluates and improves internal accounting processes, ensuring that processes align with Company policy.
  • Budget Participation: Participates in the annual budget process with Corporate management.
  • Construction Accounting: Files and books lender draws and contractor pay applications during the construction phase for new development properties.
  • Financial Reconciliation: Reconciles equity/lender funding with capital expenditures in the draw.

8. Corporate Accountant Details and Accountabilities

  • Financial Statement Preparation: Assist in preparation of the consolidated financial statements and related financial statement disclosures.
  • Variance Analysis: Prepare financial statement variance analysis.
  • Journal Entry Management: Prepare and record corporate level journal entries.
  • Report Design and Preparation: Design and prepare both routine and non-routine reports and schedules with emphasis on accuracy and timeliness.
  • Account Reconciliation: Perform account reconciliations and other internal control requirements on a timely basis.
  • Internal Control Maintenance: Maintain effective internal controls within assigned level of responsibility, consistent with the company's policies and procedures.
  • Organizational Interaction: Interact with multiple levels of the organization to understand financial and operational results to ensure accurate reporting.
  • Inquiry Assistance: Assist with internal and external customer and auditor inquiries.
  • Managerial Collaboration: Collaboratively work with department managers to understand financial performance.
  • Project Support: Assist in special projects such as audits, data analysis, account reconciliations, and other duties as assigned.
  • HR Collaboration: Collaboratively work with the HR team for new hire onboarding systems administration into payroll.
  • Ad Hoc Reporting: Assist with daily, weekly, monthly, and ad hoc reporting.
  • Third-party Coordination: Work with third-party property managers' accounting department to gather and analyze monthly activity and import it into accounting software.

9. Corporate Accountant Tasks

  • Accounts Payable and Disbursement: Performs accounts payable duties and cash disbursement duties.
  • Accounts Receivable Management: Performs accounts receivable duties and cash receipts.
  • Billing and Client Process Ownership: Owns billing, new client generation, and lost client processes with a strong attention to accuracy.
  • General Ledger Ownership: Owns GL accuracy with weekly posted transactions.
  • Compliance and Reporting: Prepares year-end 1099 forms and periodic business compliance filings.
  • Payroll Assistance: Assists in semi-monthly payroll processing and quarterly audit of deductions and benefits.
  • Vendor Payment Monitoring: Monitors vendor payments and collection of W-9s.
  • Process Adherence: Adheres to process checklists, policies, and procedures.
  • Month End Close Management: Performs month-end close duties, including reconciling bank and credit card statements and making appropriate journal entries in accordance with monthly close process checklists.
  • Balance Sheet Maintenance: Maintains balance sheet account schedules (Accruals, Prepaids, Fixed Assets, Debt Amortization).
  • Affiliate Payment Management: Maintains affiliate payment schedules and account reconciliations.
  • Financial Reporting and Analysis: Conducts financial reporting and variance analysis.

10. Corporate Accountant Roles

  • Contract Review: Review complex contracts to understand and document timing of revenue recognition, revenue classification, and invoicing requirements.
  • Process Improvement: Complete projects to improve reporting efficiency, process controls surrounding revenue, and streamline revenue recognition.
  • Opportunity Management: Create and manage renewal opportunities (SaaS, Support and Maintenance, Hosting).
  • Report Creation: Create and manage custom reports in Mavenlink (Professional Services Tool) using MAQL.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work cross-functionally with the Copperleaf sales team prior to new deals being contracted.
  • Project Implementation Support: Work cross-functionally with the Copperleaf project managers and implementation team to ensure all inputs for revenue calculations are accurate and complete.
  • Customer Service Excellence: Provide an excellent level of customer service to both Copperleaf employees and customers.
  • System Utilization: Use internal accounting systems (Netsuite, SalesForce, Mavenlink).
  • Team Support: Provide support to the Accounting and Finance team and take on additional projects and day-to-day responsibilities.
  • Account Reconciliation: Perform monthly reconciliations such as bank account, lender mortgage and escrow balances, A/R and A/P to general ledger, pass through accounts and other receivable accounts.
  • Budgeting and Reporting: Assist with preparation of the annual budgets and preparation of month-end and year-end financial reports and variance analysis.
  • Process Cross-Training: Cross-trained in all accounting processes including accounts receivable, accounts payable, and financial reporting.
  • Daily Accounting Tasks: Perform other daily accounting activities such as entering invoices and deposit activity and preparing journal entries.

11. Corporate Accountant Roles

  • Accounts Payable Support: Supports accounts payable by processing a high volume of cheque requests and invoices (both PO and non-PO) daily to the Epicor software, ensuring proper coding.
  • Accounts Payable Monitoring: Monitors the accounts payable mailboxes by reviewing emails and communicating with vendor and customer requests in a timely manner.
  • Invoice Management: Scans and indexes incoming invoices and routes them to the appropriate department head for approval.
  • Payment Processing Assistance: Assists with payment processing including printing of cheques, providing payment instructions for EFT/Wires.
  • Vendor Setup: Prepares new vendor set-up forms and routes them for approval.
  • Corporate Card Program Administration: Assists with the administration of the employee corporate card program.
  • Expense Review and Reporting: Reviews employee expenses in Concur, monitors the Concur mailbox, and assists with monthly reporting to managers.
  • Purchasing Card Management: Reviews and uploads corporate purchasing card files from Concur to Epicor.
  • Vendor Management: Manages the process of hard dollar/soft dollar vendors.
  • Disaster Recovery Support: Acts as a backup for disaster recovery testing for Accounts Payable.
  • Training: Trains junior accountant AP staff.
  • Office Management: Performs general office duties, including filing and projects.

12. Corporate Accountant Additional Details

  • Discrepancy Resolution: Investigate and resolve accounting discrepancies and irregularities and explain variances.
  • Financial Reporting Assistance: Assist with financial reporting both at a company and division level.
  • Payroll Tax Support: Assist team and payroll department with accumulating data for, and preparation of, the quarterly and annual payroll tax returns.
  • Regulatory Compliance Assistance: Assist team with other accounting, finance, and business projects including but not limited to state registrations and compliance with laws and regulations, workers' compensation and disability insurance programs and renewals, banking compliance, 401k administration.
  • Budgeting Support: Assist with budgets and forecasting activities.
  • AP/AR Support: Provide support in the accounts payable and accounts receivable areas.
  • Policy Adherence and Audit Support: Assist team ensuring adherence to all accounting policies and procedures, correct functioning of internal controls, and routine audit of payroll, cash collections, and cash disbursement activities.
  • Bookkeeping Management: Manage bookkeeping for the company, including accounts payable, expense reporting, payroll, employee reimbursements, corporate credit cards, and accounts receivable.
  • Audit and Reporting Assistance: Assist with annual/quarterly/monthly financial reporting and audit.

13. Corporate Accountant Essential Functions

  • General Ledger Management: Owns the general ledger to ensure its accuracy and completeness.
  • Journal Entry Processing: Posts and processes journal entries to ensure all business transactions are recorded.
  • Vendor Payment Management: Manages 1099 vendor payments and performs reconciliations.
  • Accounts Payable Management: Updates accounts payable and performs reconciliations.
  • Reporting: Prepares, reviews, and submits weekly and monthly reports and records payroll tax deposits.
  • Closing Process Management: Manages monthly, quarterly, and annual closing processes, ensuring timeliness, correct cutoffs, and validating accuracy and completeness.
  • Journal Entry Preparation: Prepares all monthly journal entries.
  • Bank Reconciliation: Performs monthly bank reconciliations.
  • Balance Sheet Reconciliation: Reconciles other significant balance sheet accounts.
  • Shareholder Distribution Management: Maintains shareholder distribution schedules.
  • Profit and Loss Analysis: Conducts analytical analysis of profit and loss accounts.

14. Corporate Accountant Role Purpose

  • Financial Close Management: Ensure the financial statement close process is completed and integrate new business processes.
  • Reconciliation Oversight: Compile all necessary information to ensure all financial statement line items are reconciled and substantiated monthly.
  • Research and Correction: Independently research and document reconciling items, and, if applicable, make any correcting journal entries.
  • Cash Management Execution: Perform cash management for the operating and investment accounts, reconcile cash accounts on a timely basis, and monitor for timely cash deposits.
  • Trend Analysis: Perform monthly and quarterly account trending analysis including all balance sheet and income statement accounts.
  • Audit and Tax Support: Support audit and tax requirements, including preparation of required materials.
  • System Optimization: Review and recommend modifications to accounting systems and procedures.
  • SOX Compliance: Develop and document controls, processes, and procedures to ensure SOX compliance.
  • GAAP Adherence: Maintain knowledge of GAAP rules and ensure proper application as a part of the accounting and reporting processes.
  • Policy Development: Design, implement, and maintain accounting and travel policies and procedures.
  • Ad Hoc Support: Perform other accounting, financial, or administrative tasks as may be required from time to time by the Controller/CFO.

15. Corporate Accountant General Responsibilities

  • Journal Entry Preparation: Prepares general ledger journal entries, fixed asset tracking, monthly balance sheet reconciliation.
  • Financial Reporting Assistance: Assists Assistant Controller with generating and filing monthly financial reports.
  • Financial Report Production: Produces month-end financial reports and issues them to appropriate personnel in a timely manner.
  • Account Reconciliation: Analyzes and reconciles general ledger accounts.
  • Journal Entry Management: Prepares, researches, resolves, and enters recurring and reversing journal entries.
  • Payroll Management: Prepares bi-weekly payroll journal entries.
  • Accounting Standards Implementation: Assists in the adoption of new accounting standards.
  • Policy Support and Advice: Supports policy development and offers advice regarding accounting and internal control issues, reporting needs, and policy review and changes.
  • Audit Support: Assists with annual external audits.
  • Accounts Payable/Receivable Backup: Serves as backup to Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable functions.
  • Asset Management: Maintains fixed asset and associated depreciation schedules.
  • Tax Compliance Support: Supports Federal and State tax filings and compliance reporting