Make Your Career Helping Others with Accounting!
- Nela Friesen
- Dec 5, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 11, 2024
Table of Contents
About Avail
Avail is an accounting firm with an office in Taber. They provide many accounting services that range from being as simple as taxes to doing all the bookkeeping for a business. Avail’s perspective is that accounting is all about helping people. They help people not only with the financial aspect of their business but also in other areas. For example, after looking through the books of a certain company, they might notice that the company has a very high employee turnover, so employees are constantly coming and leaving rather than keeping the job for years. Avail may then send in Human Resources Consultants to help the company with this issue. As shown in this example, Avail tries to help clients with all their problems, not only accounting, although that is their biggest area of expertise. I spoke with Stephen McKee and Tylyn Cousins from the company.
What are the positions in the company?
Accounting is a very broad industry with so many different opportunities for people to pursue. When you complete your post-secondary education, you become an accountant but after this, you will want to get your designation as a CPA (Certified Public Accountant, more on this later). After this, there are many positions that you can get promoted to within the company. The positions are Senior Accountant, Supervisor, Manager, Principal, and eventually, you could become a partner in the firm. Within the company, the accountants also serve a variety of clients and can specialize in areas such as auditing, agriculture, nonprofit organizations, etc. There are so many different paths for accountants within the company. Outside of accounting, the company also has other employees in HR, Marketing, and Administration.
What is it like to be an accountant at Avail?
An average day on the job
There will be different responsibilities depending on the client you are currently working with and your position within the company. Tylyn is a manager at the firm and specializes in the agriculture industry. She no longer works with the smaller details as the entry-level accountants do. Instead, she will review their work and meet with the clients. However, it will be a lot of time at the computer for accountants, no matter what position you currently have.
Work Conditions
Accounting is a pretty collaborative job at Avail because they have a team of a minimum of 3 accountants who work on every file. There can be more accountants in a team depending on the client. It will be hard to do it by yourself, so you will ask each other questions and work together as a team.
The hours will vary depending on the time of year. Around July, it’s not so busy so they can work the standard 7.5 hours per day and go home. However, they are a lot more busy at the beginning of the year, around January to April with personal taxes, so the accountants may be required to work overtime. It can be a stressful job with the amount of work, but it won’t be too hard if you are able to manage it well.
Most Difficult and Most Rewarding Part
According to Tylyn, people, who can be both coworkers and clients, can be the most difficult part of the job but also the most rewarding. Accounting is all about helping others so when you work together with other accountants to make a difference for the clients, it is a very rewarding job. In all workplaces, coworkers or customers may be difficult to get along with, but the services you can provide for customers outweigh the bad, especially when you can see that you made a good impact on another person's life.
Qualities Needed
There aren't many specific qualities needed to be an accountant besides some skill with numbers and detail. This is because you need accountants who are good with numbers and details but also those who are good with people and clients, etc. Really, a lot of people can succeed as an accountant, your career may just look a bit different depending on your skillset and qualities since accounting is such a broad industry.
Pay
The pay for an accountant is not amazing to start, it might be around $50,000 to $60,000 a year, but like with any career, as you gain experience, your income will increase as well. Once you get your CPA designation, you will really see your career take off. It is similar to what you may have heard about the trades where you don’t really get paid that much until you finish your schooling and gain the journeyman title. After you get your CPA designation, you will begin to earn a higher income.
Behind every good business is a GREAT accountant. (Unknown)
CPA: What is it and why does it matter?
CPA stands for Certified Public Accountant and it adds these letters behind your title as an accountant to show that you know what you are doing. It will be another 2.5 years of school but Avail covered the costs for Tylyn which made it easier. You can also work during this time so you will still be paid. Going through this program won’t be easy and comes with a 3-day exam at the end, but because of this, completing it makes it worth a lot more in your career as an accountant. It shows people that you have learned a lot and that you can do a good job as an accountant, and as mentioned before, it will also help your income.
Post-Secondary
There are a few paths you can take for your post-secondary education to become an accountant. One option would be to go through the program at the University of Lethbridge. For Tylyn, she did a co-op after her third year, so she was given a job placement for a year before she went back to school for her fourth year. This allowed her to get a job after university and also helped her gain experience with other accountants in an actual workplace setting. The other option would be to complete the first two years at Lethbridge Polytechnic (formerly Lethbridge College) and then complete the next two years at the University of Lethbridge. This path would definitely be cheaper but the only concern is that the switch from the college to the university would be difficult. Tylyn heard this from others and made the decision to go to the University of Lethbridge for all four years to avoid this switch. The advice that I got was to go through the schooling to become an accountant right out of high school. Getting a job placement after your third year is a good choice because it helps you get experience. It will help your resume for after university as well.
The hardest part of going through the schooling to become an accountant was the switch from high school to university. University is harder because there is less support from the teachers, so it’s important to build good study and classroom habits while you are still in high school. Going through the schooling to become an accountant will help you a lot because they teach many real-life skills that you will actually need on the job. The exam at the end of the CPA course includes many scenarios so that you can prove your skills in real situations. During this schooling, you will also show that you are dedicated to your career, that you can finish what you start, and it will also help you develop the skills that many employers look for when hiring such as time management, setting goals, and working hard.
For Lethbridge Polytechnic, the cost would be around $15k for both years of the program, and you would need math 30-1 or math 30-2. Going to the University of Lethbridge is a bit more expensive with the first year alone likely costing around $10k. The admission requirements for the University of Lethbridge are also a bit more complicated so I would recommend checking out their website to find the admissions and other information for the specific programs you are looking for. There are also good industry statistics on their website as well that are worth checking out.
What can students do in high school to prepare?
Taking a class like financial management in high school would be helpful to gain a bit of knowledge in areas such as taxes and other financial topics. It’s also always important to continue developing skills that can be transferred to post-secondary and the workplace as mentioned above, such as time management and dedication to your work.
Hopefully, you learned a lot through this post. Thanks for reading and thanks to Stephan McKee and Tylyn Cousins at Avail for agreeing to meet with me for an interview! Share the post if you know someone who would be interested, and feel free to provide any feedback through the website. Thanks again and see you next week!
Check Out Avail!
Website: https://www.availcpa.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AvailCPA/
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