Information on the duties, responsibilities, and descriptions for a senior accountant.

Business enterprises use the services of both junior and senior accountants. Junior accountants deal with accounts at more fundamental level, such as preparing vouchers, feeding them in accounts packages, ensuring that it is posted under the correct head of the account, and reconciling bank statements. Senior accountants act on the information generated by the junior accountants. For example, the junior accountant feeds information about sales, and generates information about how much is receivable as of date. The senior accountant analyzes whether the business is incurring additional interest on moneys blocked in the receivables, and whether it is worthwhile offering some discount to get that money out from the debtor. Therefore, the senior accountant`s role is more crucial for the financial health of the business.

A senior accountant`s job involves:
a. Preparing budgets, financial reports, analyzing financial data, guiding the junior accountants in preparing accounts in accordance with accepted accounting and auditing principles and practices, organizing audits, complying with tax provisions and requirements, managing finances, and offering any financial advice as may be necessary to the manage;
b. Complying with various laws, rules, and regulations that are applicable to the specific industry including accountancy and tax laws;
c. Managing the business with prudent economic principles and practice

The above job description of senior accountant may be broken down into two parts, i.e., responsibilities of senior accountant, which have legal repercussions, and duties, which need to be done to keep the business running. The following would be the major responsibilities of the senior accountant:
a. Compliance with all the laws, deadlines, and legal requirements in so far as they relate to accounts and finance of the business;
b. Filing financial reports and documents with the tax authorities and paying up taxes in time;
c. Organizing all types of audits and tax audits;

Duties of senior accountants include:
a. Organizing preparation of books of accounts in time for compliance with other statutory provisions;
b. Ensuring that the accounting procedures being followed as per law and accepted standard or policy. For example company follows accrual system of accounting, then all transactions should be recorded in the same method.
c. Ensuring that the work of junior accountant is accurate and is available in time for audit;
d. Keeping a regular and systematic vigil on finances of the business enterprise and optimizing the use of finance;
e. Preparing monthly and annual accounts to monitor profits, and preparing projections and budgets for planning cash flows and profits
f. To assist junior accountants, whenever in doubt such as differences between revenue account and capital accounts
g. Developing databases that are not exactly recorded in the accounts packages; For example the extent of land sold out of total extent of land purchased, stock records, etc.
h. Setting up control procedures at various levels to ensure that the information in the accounts does not vary with physical verification. i. Planning taxes