What's the difference of a Accountant from Financial Analyst?

Question

What's the difference of a Accountant from Financial Analyst?

Answer 1

accountant does the book work.

financial analyst works with the market and probability

Answer 2

an accountant simply does the paperwork while a financial analyst as the term indicates investigates the possible risks and benefits of a given inversion.

Answer 3

an accountant is going to be a pretty good financial analyst.

MUST be.  A Good financial Analyst should have a very strong accounting background.

Answer 4

Generally an accountant is focused on doing things like journal entries, month end close, balance sheet reconciliations, creating the work for parts or all of financial statements, etc (more time sensitive, repetitive tasks- at least for entry levels).  

A financial analyst is more project based looking for trends in expenses and doing things like looking at the financial statements and asking (or explaining) why things have changed or what things are occurring.  Less daily tasks, more putting out fires than repetitive work.

I think the financial analyst position is usually for someone with at least a couple years of accounting/finance experience, where as a staff accountant would be entry level.  A senior accountant position is often seen as the equivalent of a financial analyst position (and are sometimes interchangeable names at different companies).  Many times working as a staff accountant for 1-2 years is required before you can move into an analyst role (so as to gain an understanding of accounting in practice).

I think the main difference is the financial analyst is more macro level- looking at trends and trying to explain the how and/or why of company results.  An accountant is more of a micro level- doing the actual journal entries, accruals, AP, and such (less critical thinking and more doing at the entry level- not down the line though there is a lot in accounting that is challenging).

This only applies to corporate finance (an auditor or tax company accountant would be completely different).  Some companies will call a senior accountant a financial analyst or vice versa, so you will probably get lots of answers (although I have been in finance at 5 companies so this has some merit).

Answer 5

An accountant has to have a degree and is not in banking.

a financial analyst can be a customer service rep at a bank, simply giving advice on money.

Answer 6

Gender can be different, Hair color, eye color, lots of differences.  However an analyst can be a high school student while an accountant (CPA) cannot.