Accountant job description

Every organization that moves money has books to keep straight, and the accountant's job is making the record match reality: examining, analyzing, and interpreting accounting records, preparing financial statements from them, and advising on what the numbers mean for tax and operations. The pay data lumps two titles together: BLS prices accountants and auditors on one wage line, 13-2011. That combined line showed a May 2025 median of $83,680 a year, the highest-earning tenth above $144,090, the lowest under $56,020, and 1,449,500 jobs nationwide.

Core Duties and Responsibilities

Month to month the work is the close: preparing adjusting journal entries, reviewing accounts for discrepancies and reconciling the differences, assigning entries to their proper accounts, and examining inventory against the ledger. Around it come the statements themselves, prepared and analyzed for accuracy, completeness, and conformance to reporting standards, plus taxes computed and returns filed to meet payment and reporting requirements. Accountants also confer with company officials on financial and regulatory matters, recommend controls that keep systems and data reliable, and advise clients on questions ranging from compensation and benefits design to long-range tax and estate planning.

Common Skills and Technologies

This is a reading job before it is a math job: dense standards, contracts, and regulations, with mathematics ranking well below comprehension, listening, and critical thinking in the occupation's skill data. On software, employers ask for Intuit QuickBooks and general accounting packages by name, along with Microsoft Excel and the wider Office suite; SAP is on the in-demand list beside them, and the hot list runs straight past bookkeeping into analysis: Microsoft Dynamics, Alteryx, Microsoft Access, and Microsoft SQL Server.

Education, Training, and Career Path

Most routes in run through a four-year degree, though O*NET notes some roles manage without one, and its job zone for the occupation treats that degree plus several years of accounting experience as the norm before someone counts as fully qualified. Certified Public Accountant is one of the titles workers here report, alongside cost accountant, general accountant, and revenue tax specialist, which maps where the work branches once the fundamentals are down.

Sources: O*NET 30.0, 13-2011.00 Accountants and Auditors, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/13-2011.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 13-2011, https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm.