More than just numbers

More than just numbers

            When most people think about accounting, the first thing that comes to mind is all of the numbers. But what most people don’t realize is that there is actually a lot of writing involved in this career as well. Not only is it very important for accountants to be good at math but they also have to be good at writing and explain things in good detail as well.

As said in an article written by DePaul, it is very important for accountants to be able to communicate with clients and co-workers as well. In other words, accounting is characterized by clarity and conciseness so that the reader is able to understand. Writing in accounting includes argumentative and analytical pieces and not just descriptive words. If you think accounting is your escape from writing you might want to think about it again as explained by Gabriele Lingenfelter (2010):

            Frequently, our students do not realize that written communication skills are essential to the accounting profession. As a matter of fact, communication skills are one of the five core competencies outlined in the CPA Vision Project, tested on the CPA Exam and demanded by employers.

Writing is not only important in this field but many other fields as well. You will not be able to escape writing in almost any career of study that you may wish to pursue. Although you may be able to find one that has less writing than others.

            From the academic and non-academic sources I have noticed that there are certain elements that are important in the writing for accounting. For example, one must be aware of the audience that they are trying to communicate with. The audience definitely has an impact on the tone that you must portray. For some you might have to write more formally than others. Some examples of this would be an email between you and a co-worker or to a client. Those would have to be two different tones, also depending on if you know the person in a more personal level or not.

Another important element for writing in accounting would be writing with a clear purpose and clarity. For example, when you are writing with a clear purpose, you have to make sure your audience understands what you are trying to say. Also tying along with that would be the clarity of the writing as well. It needs to be clear and easy to understand. Again depending on the reader and if they know a lot or very little about accounting in general.

            For my interview I chose someone that works in the same place as me and that would be for the University of Iowa’s parking and transportation. There are a few accountants that work there and the one that I had interviewed had been working there they were in college and ended up staying there to work as an accountant and has now been working there as an accountant for about 5 years now. They said they actually spend a lot of time writing and estimate about 4 or 5 hours doing just that at work.

As an accountant you will be expected to write in different ways. Really common types of writing that were named by DePaul and a source that that was titled the writing center were reports, e-mails, memos, papers and letters. Accountants often write letters to their clients, co-workers and also the government. These letters allow you to build relationships, make recommendations, and take certain actions. Emails are mostly more commonly used in the business world as I was also told by the person I interviewed as well. They are used a lot to communicate with other people in the same business, clients, and other businesses as well. They can either be a formal or an informal letter that introduces procedures, conclusions, etc. Papers are also something that accountants have to write every once in a while as well. They require a summary and analysis of papers. Viewing someone’s argument and seeing its importance.

There are different types of papers an accountant can write and those are opinion papers and research papers as well. Opinion papers describe your opinion/position on certain ideas/subjects. While research papers are based more off of evidence that you find in your investigations. For my interviewee the most difficult document they had to write was the reports. For reports because they have to analyze the parking passes and make sure things are going the way they should be and nothing is missing from that because a lot of the cashiers forget to mention that they reduced the rate of someone’s parking for some reason. For someone who has always thought of accounting as an escape from writing, with this assignment I realized that it was not the case.

Not only are there non-academic ways of writing for this profession but there are also academic forms of writing as well. This expressed by those in this field writing to each other. Information for this type of writing is often in a more academic way by presenting their information with graphs, pie charts, and the formulas which they use to show their work. The audience in this form of writing is also more limited. In academic writing you would be writing to other accountant, whereas in non-academic you would be writing to your clients.

In writing there will always be for many purposes and audiences, some that are more formal than others as well. Whether it may be an email, report, or a memo for the forms of non-academic writing. But also the more formal types of writing as well which comes to play in the more academic aspect of it, which would be the graphs, charts, etc. that are used to prove others of your work and findings. Although this field seems like more of a mathematical field with no writing included, writing takes a huge part in this field. So next time you might want to consider escaping writing, you might want to think twice about that because it’s going to be a lot harder than you may think.

References

University Center for Writing-based Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved February 08, 2016

Writing in Accounting and Finance. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.umt.edu/writingcenter/docs/Writing in Accounting and Finance.pdf

Lingenfelter, G. (2010). Improving accounting students' writing skills. Retrieved February 09, 2016, from http://www.accountingweb.com/aa/auditing/improving-accounting-students-writing-skills