Financial Manager

Morning:

• Read and respond to emails, which may involve approving/denying requests for investments or expenses, approving invoices, or responding to instructions from upper management to carry out more specific tasks like conducting tax calculations or explaining increase in costs or reduction in sales.

Mid-morning:

• Attend a daily meeting with the management team to get updated on deviations in performance from the previous day and find corrective actions for negative deviances. In these meetings, the business controller gives input on anything related to finance, for example in the event of failure of existing equipment, the business controller will propose the most cost effective way to replace this machinery (e.g. renting replacement machinery instead of buying)
• These kinds of meetings are common to any industry, even a service industry.

Afternoon:

• Various members of the management team (e.g. head of engineering department, head of manufacturing department, head of purchasing department, head of HR) will seek advice on finance-related issues, such as (in the case of the HR department) determining whether the company should invest in a full-time or part-time additional employee, considering the available funds.
• Consulting comprises the majority of a business controller’s job responsibilities, and the type of issues he/she may have to advise on vary greatly from day to day.
• Costing estimation and pricing recommendation is also a regular task, and involves calculating cost of a customer order, determining a good margin of profit and recommending an appropriate price.

Ad Hoc tasks: These tasks are required every once in awhile

• Evaluating the costs and potential profit involved in acquiring a new company
• Calculating the payback of a new investment
• Business plan and quarterly forecast: calculating a financial forecast of projected profit for the next year/next 3 months
• Communicating with bankers and lawyers: e.g. asking for loans, or working with a lawyer to determine the financial implications of a lawsuit against the company, or changing the title of the land, for example
• Business controllers are commonly also charged with securing IT performance of the company: this may involve forming a project team to determine if implementation of a new software or programme will sufficiently improve the company’s performance, for example
• Annual audit: may have to prepare some documents for auditors reviewing (charged with verifying the accuracy of my accounting performance according to accounting principles of the IFRS), according to their request, and make time to answer questions they may have
• Make sure that the property of the facility is insured at the accurate current market value
• Deal with taxes: prepare tax report for IRS once a year, and make timely payments on property tax to local government

End of the month, and annual closing:

• These can be very busy and demanding periods due to strict due dates. In these periods, a typical day involves the additional responsibilities of making sure all financial transactions conducted by the company are recognized/accounted for (e.g. stocks, invoices, accruals, fixed assets appreciation, inventory, accounts payable, accounts receivable)

Soft Skills

• Communication skills: explain and justify complex financial concepts
• Detail oriented: precise and attentive in preparing and analyzing reports such as balance sheets and income
• Judgment and decision-making
• Complex problem-solving
• Organizational skills: dealing with a range of information and documents

Technical Skills

• Analytical skills: assisting executives in making decisions
• Math skills: algebra, and the ability to understand international finance and complex financial documents
• Accounting software: Hyperion Enterprise, Intuit QuickBooks, Sage 50 Accounting, Sage Fixed Asset Solution FAS
• Data base user interface and query software: Microsoft Access, Structured query language SQL, Yardi
• Spreadsheet software: Corel QuattroPro, IBM Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft Excel

• Service industries: e.g. banking, consulting, teaching
• Manufacturing industries
• Trading industries: e.g. Amazon
• Accounting and financial management is a core position in almost every type of organization

• It’s always good to work for a ‘Big 5’ company because they will give you exposure to a great variety of industries (service, manufacturing, etc.), and it’s a good resume-booster

• Attaining a CPA qualification is very desirable now, and will give you the possibility in the future to open your own accounting firm

• If you liked math in school, or are naturally gifted with numbers and are detail-oriented