What is the role of an accountant in a business?

Question

what is the role of an accountant in a business?

Answer 1

It depends on the position and the size of the company.  For a very small company, the accountant may handle everything:  payroll, internal auditing, taxes, keeping the books, etc.  In a larger company these functions will be broken down between groups or handled through outside firms.

Just some examples would be the internal auditors are responsible for monitoring and record keeping of cash in-flow and expenses in a company.  They would also be responsible to make sure that money was being appropriately used and all monies were acounted for.  Tax acountants would be responsible for filing of taxes as well as all of the legal ramifications, strategies, record keeping, etc that go along with it.  Accountants involed in payroll would be doing the obvious but this is usually handled through bookkeeping or payroll specialists who are not necessarily accountants.  I'm sure there are plenty of other jobs accountants but these are the very basics and very large companies break these tasks into very small areas of specialization and function.