My Career

Abstract

I am a businesswoman and I want to be successful. In any type of business, an accountant is needed. I must consider that accounting is basically the language in business, and having enough knowledge about accountancy is essential for me to know how my business is doing. By studying accounting, it will allow me in the gathering, classifying and recording of my business financial transactions. This process is necessary in order to keep the business running smoothly and to make continuous improvement.

One of the decisive factors that Ifind interesting in this field, is that Chinese accountants are a high demand in Belize. I heard there are approximately ten to fifteen firms in Belize which are recognized by the government, but none is owned by Chinese. Due to the native languag, lots of Chinese merchants do not really understand the rule of the taxation, and this causes them to penalties when the tax department check their businesses. Therefore, I would like to gain some experience from this career field and open a firm in the future, so I can help the Chinese association.

I am a lover of mathematics and have a keen sense of order and discipline; becoming an accountant is a natural fit. Accounting is mostly about numbers and how to manipulate them, although by understanding and knowing how to work with numbers is not the only ability that an accountant needs to be successful, but I believe that by biulding up my number sense will be helpful in the field.

The accounting field is very broad, and there is no other program that offers more opportunities. Accounting is the language of business since the dialect of business is money, and every business discipline whether it be management, marketing or finance, utilizes the financial statements developed by accountants. An accounting background can be very helpful not only for careers but also personally.

Introduction

Accounting is the study of how businesses track their income and assets over time. Accountants engage in a wide variety of activities besides preparing financial statements and recording business transactions including computing costs and efficiency gains from new technologies, participating in strategies for mergers and acquisitions, quality management, developing and using information systems to track financial performance, tax strategy, and health care benefits management.

Accountants can actually go into any industry whether the health care, technology, or banking. Accountants can also go into what is refered to as public accounting or a private industry. Accountants can also go into government, work for a government entity or learn about fund accounting. If an accountant follows the public accounting route, he or she will learn how to audit external financial statements. On the other hands in private industry, it is also broadened. It would also vary depending upon which industry you have entered. Accountants can be involved in operational accounting; which would be recording the accounting transactions and applying new accounting pronouncements to the company. Accountants might be more involved on the reporting side whether it may be internal reporting, external reporting or other regulatory agencies. In a regulated industry, accountants can also go into taxation. The accounting background would also allow us to go into financial analysis where we could build on variance analysis between actuals and budgets, and to actually more on to building budgets and working on sophisticated what is scenarios. So, the accounting background actually does prepare us for many, many options and opportunities career-wise.

Research

The high-level business scandals (e.g. Enron, Worldcom and Parmalat) in a

global '...economy where "knowledge" and service work predominate' have resulted in increased demands for the knowledge and skills of public accountants to provide more extensive audit services. Following congressional reforms in the USA, the

public accounting firms and public listed companies are jostling for more auditors,

according to a report in the Business Week magazine (Byrnes 2005). Accounting

students can now maximise the benefits from an accounting education in terms of

employment and career opportunities. The increased demand for public accountants is also present in the Australian region. CPA Australia reported that a global demand for accountants had caused a critical shortage in Australia, with increases in demand

being placed upon accounting programmes in the Australian universities. In

Singapore, the rapid expansion and de-regulation of the finance and banking sector saw an increased demand for accountants in the Republic. A pioneer batch of 100

accounting undergraduates was admitted to the new Singapore Management

University in 2001. This is in addition to the constant yearly intake of about 650

accountancy undergraduates by the Nanyang Business School, Nanyang

Technological University. In Hong Kong, more accountants were needed to service the Chinese economy, as a result of the acception of China into the World Trade

Organization. The observation showed that the number of students majoring in

accountancy programmes in tertiary institutions in Hong Kong has been increasing. This is reflected in the steady increase in the number of accounting graduates from slightly more than 1000 in 1995 to 1374 in 2000 from the seven University Grants Committee funded universities. Given this phenomenon in the

Australian region, it would be interesting to identify the factors that drive students to pursue an accounting education.

In the accounting world, there are real and tangible advantages in being a

certified public accountant. The rewards for passing the exam include: a substantial increase in employment marketability thus reulting in compensation, eligibility