Accounting: Private vs. Public Accounting Services - Essay Sample

Introduction

Comprehensive and systematic financial transaction recordings are involved in the field of study of accounting which is displayed in two primary forms the private and the public accounting. Private accountants mostly perform their jobs in the financial analysis in one particular company, and they are involved in the development of new products and strategic planning. Public accounting, on the other hand, is a business or a firm that offers specific services of accounting to other companies. Both the public accounting and the private accounting provide several career opportunities to different individuals who directly engage themselves in auditing for companies either those that are publicly owned or those that are owned by individuals or corporate companies. Individuals who work in private accounting and those that work in private accounting have several differences that shape their career goals and interests according to their lines of duty.

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Public accountants are external accountants because they do their accounting activities for different companies where they perform their work to satisfy transparency among different requirements for regulation. Private accountants, on the other hand, perform their duties strictly for one company and they are not allowed to perform any auditing for any other company (Crossman, 2017). By being external, public accountants are not employed by one company or client; instead, they are allowed to work for several companies where they offer their accounting services. Private accountants are labeled as internal because they do not have a variety of clients and are employed by companies where they provide accounting services for their employers only. The career of the private accountant is surrounded by a single business entity where they serve the individual interests of that business alone. The public accountants develop their careers around many private clients or federal agencies, and they give their final accounting data with no bias because they are not subjected to any pressure like employees are.

Public accounting involves training where the accountants are trained about the analysis of systems of accounting as well as the validation of disclosures for finances. The public accountants prepare the financial statements for different companies, and they ensure that they do not support one country over the other in the representation of results in a fair way (Ng, Lai, Su, Yap, Teoh & Lee, 2017). Private accounting involves training where the accountants are trained on how to record transactions of accounting which in the end create financial statements. Private accountants work in one company, and they are prepared to set up internal systems such are the recording of transactions of business which is the primary preparation method for financial statements. The career development that public accountants have compared to private accountants is that the public ones are exposed to a variety of industries and this helps to improve their skills to more significant levels beyond what they are taught. The private accountants, on the other hand, are limited to specific knowledge that is found in the only company they work for.

For one to be a public accountant and work in the analysis and auditing of financial reports of different companies, they must be certified while for the private accountants, it is not compulsory to be certified to work for a private company in their financial reports. This means that the public accountants have more knowledge acquired in school than the private accountants and they are not bound to make any mistakes in the preparation of financial reports for the different companies they are hired to work for (Apostolou, Dorminey, Hassell & Rebele, 2018). The public accountants also travel a lot and going to the sites of the location of clients helps them expand their knowledge and experience where they meet better financial experts who teach them new skills and help them develop their careers every day. The private accountants do not travel and are fixed to their work locations which limit their career development because they are not exposed to a range of new information and skills.

Public accounting involves companies that require the public accountants to work for long hours to meet the deadlines that are set while in private accounting, the accountants are subjected to regular and stable working hours with no push for long working hours. This is a clear sign that public accountants are usually limited to time and work for extra hours to reach those deadlines hence they are not able to develop themselves in new careers due to limited time (Brink, Norman & Wier, 2015). The private accountants, on the other hand, can advance themselves in new careers because they have stable and regular hours of working which means they can create a continuous timetable of the time they will be attending classes to venture in new careers and know new career paths that they can follow.

The career lines of development of public accountants and private accountants are different because public accountants begin their careers as accountants on the entry levels and advance to the senior positions of accounting where they get the jobs of senior management in the companies such as audit partners. The career lines of the private accountants also start as entry-level accountants, but they advance to high positions of management such as being the Managing Financial Officers of the company they are employed (Gaynor, Kelton, Mercer & Yohn, 2016). The individuals who choose the career path in accounting either as private accountants or public accountants face specific pros and cons that are different in both forms of accounting. Public accountants have the advantages of that they have chances for specialization, acquire a lot of exposure when they interact and work with different clients, and they have high chances of getting job opportunities and advancements. This is different from the private accountants who lack choices and varieties in their job duties, their job opportunities and promotions are slower, and they have few chances of specializing. The disadvantages of public accounting are that these accountants work for longer hours where they are not able to predict their working hours, they experience a lot of pressure and set deadlines and have a high possibility of travels that inconvenience them. The private accountants, on the other hand, have steady environments for work where their working time is fixed, they are stressed less in their places of work, and they can work in management jobs without any Certified Public Accountant license.

Conclusion

Both private and public accounting involves almost the same types of jobs, education, and skills. However, individuals who work in private accounting and those that work in private accounting have several differences that shape their career goals and interests according to their lines of duty. They are different, and they use unique means of assessing the financial statements of the companies where the accountants work. They also both help to develop skills to graduates in different ways where they grow the career paths of such individuals. Public accountants have the duty of tax of different companies, forensic accounting, auditing, consulting and advisory duties which makes graduates who want to take on this career path to have a wide range of choices on the type of work they feel that suits them. Private accountants work for specific businesses, agencies or governments and play a significant role in the success of the organization they work. It is evident that many public accountants sometimes work in the private sector and they must have strong social and communication skills.

References

Apostolou, B., Dorminey, J. W., Hassell, J. M., & Rebele, J. E. (2018). Accounting education literature review (2017). Journal of accounting education, 43, 1-23.

Brink, A. G., Norman, C. S., & Weir, B. (2015). Attained education and promotion in public accounting. Issues in Accounting Education, 31(3), 301-320.

Crossman, H. A. (2017). Awareness of the public versus private accounting divide, and its impact on the career path preference of accounting students. Accounting Education, 26(4), 392-409.

Gaynor, L. M., Kelton, A. S., Mercer, M., & Yohn, T. L. (2016). Understanding the relationship between financial reporting quality and audit quality. Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, 35(4), 1-22.

Ng, Y. H., Lai, S. P., Su, Z. P., Yap, J. Y., Teoh, H. Q., & Lee, H. (2017). Factors influencing accounting students' career paths. Journal of Management Development, 36(3), 319-329.