A Day In The Life of An Accountant!

So we said we'd be looking at things in terms of daily tasks and the monthly and then seasonal.

If we are starting off with the daily tasks, the things that I deal with on a daily basis are going to be broken down by four major things.

Uh, one is accounts payable or payments to vendor and then accounts receivable and collection from customers and then payroll.

And then lastly, employee expenses.

And those are the four components that we'll make ultimately at the end of financial statements, right? So accounts payable and expenses are gonna go on the income statement.

AR and collection that makes up revenue on top of the income statement.

Payroll is one of the biggest expenses of a company in general.

And then employee expenses, and what I mean by that is travel expenses and things that employees spend their money on and ask the company for reimbursement, such as phone bills, meals, and things like that.

so most days when I get into the office I'm looking at accounts payable in terms of responding to inquiries from vendors on payments that they're sending us emails asking about the status of their payments looking at an aging and so the best way for me to know the status of accounts payable how how late are we on paying some vendors or the status of it is looking at the actual aging schedule which gives me a vendor looking at the buckets of 30 days 60 days and 90 days understanding where we are with payments to vendors and then secondly I look at accounts receivable and so I always look at an aging also so looking at the aging will tell you past new customers and things that are late understanding where you are with collection that's really important as well The third aspect of sort of the daily routine is going to be payroll.

And, you know, payroll obviously isn't daily.

So payroll is in the U.S. is twice a month.

And most companies, some companies pay weekly, but in most companies it's biweekly or twice a month.

And so what I mean by payroll on a daily basis is that you are dealing with adjustments to the payroll, a new employee is starting, an employee is leaving, there is a bonus of some kind, and all of these things you need to be able to make sure it's in the payroll system so that it's processed on time because obviously people are just super sensitive about their earnings.

You gotta make sure that's correct.

and making sure that whatever you're inputting in the payroll system will then flow incorrectly into your accounting financial package or software, whatever it is, QuickBooks or whatever you're using at your company.

So payroll is another thing.

Expense management, which is employee expense management.

This is the expenses that employees are spending when they travel.

Or if they are working remotely, it's going to be things like their phone bills or internet bills and things like that.

And typically people submit these expenses via expense management platforms like Expensify or Concur or any system like that.

And in the back end, we are sitting as accountants reviewing these expenses, looking at the receipts, making sure that people are not spending more than they should.

So typically there's a policy.

So for example, the phone policy at my company is $75 a month for the cell phone if you are a salesperson.

And if somebody submitting a phone bill and asking for $85 right there, I'll catch it.

And then I start, I only pay him the $75.