2024-03-12 05:42:00
The trends in the accounting market may worry those interested in studying accounting, but there are also bright spots. The accountant of the future will be very different from the traditional accountant. The field is undergoing a real revolution that will make the work of accountants more technological, efficient and faster. The need for interns and accountants in the offices will decrease, but there will be a need for specializations – in understanding the processes of the work, also in the technological aspect, in a professional understanding of accounting, and at the same time the additional areas of the accounting offices will be strengthened – taxes, consulting and more.
The traditional accountant – the future accountant
The traditional accountant was trusted for the correctness of the financial reports of a firm and business and was essentially a “trustee” of the readers and users of the reports, despite being an appointment of the company-business. He would review and check the correctness of the reports and provide reviews and audits (at the end of a year) aimed at testifying to the reliability of the reports. Admittedly, there is no absolute certainty, but the accountant is supposed to do all the necessary quantitative and qualitative tests in order to make sure that the reports are correct.
The accountant would do this through documents, work papers, inventory counts, physical tests, statistical tests, contact and tests with customers, suppliers, banks and more. Gradually, the large offices began to use tools and computer systems that would facilitate the audit work. The technological revolution will make this work more efficient and faster and will essentially free up the time of interns and accountants.
In the big offices, the work of the traditional accountant – the audit of the reports – is indeed the core of the business, but not the core of revenues and profits. They earn much more than the surrounding – taxes and consulting. A large part of the accountants today do not deal with classical accounting, but in the surrounding professions, and therefore, from the perspective of above, it is not certain that the changes in the field of auditing will harm the employees of the big firms or the desire to study accounting. Studies are already more oriented towards the new world. However, there is great uncertainty in the profession due to other reasons as well.
The amount of interns that the universities and colleges “export” to the market every year reaches 1,200-1,300 interns. A large part of them was absorbed by the big accounting firms when in practice this is also what most of the interns want. The main reason for this is that the goal of most people is to later reach positions in companies and the most accepted way to get there is through a large office that controls hundreds of companies, some of which are public companies. These offices are also used as a type of placement company and when the company the office audits lacks an accountant, CFO, etc., the office turns to those who worked for it or employees who want to leave.
For many, many years, the internship was low-paid, but about 3-4 years ago due to a lack of interns, there were significant increases in accounting offices, with the salary for beginners today being NIS 8-9 thousand. A beginning accountant already earns NIS 12-14 thousand. It depends a lot on which department the accountant is employed in and his specific abilities.
A large part of the interns end up in the “special” departments of the ministries and there they specialize in specific fields, and the majority still end up in the areas of audit and there are some big question marks. Along with the introduction of technology, there are other trends that may lead to changes in the market. First, large offices outsource the audit to India and it can also reach other places in the world. It is mainly an audit of companies that trade abroad and report in English. The large firms are part of multinational firms and these entities have branches in India. The audit is cheaper there.
After all, it just needs to be said – criticism is not rocket science. It’s a pretty gray job of making moves and checks. In many parts of the world you don’t even need to study accounting to do it. This threat is probably limited, because it does not apply to companies that report in Hebrew.
Another trend that is happening and getting stronger is the entry of the ultra-orthodox into the profession. This is nothing new, but the amount of ultra-Orthodox in the field is increasing. They manage to pass the board exams in high percentages and are very much in demand by the big firms, as they gradually reach a significant volume in the market that graduates, according to estimates about 15% and it increases every year. The number of Arabs studying a profession is also increasing.
Excess of interns?
In the background, the internalization that the audit will become more automatic, and given that the economy in the last year mainly due to the war, in an economic slowdown, the accounting offices, like any business, are on the defensive. This was reflected in the last recruitment cycle.
In the last cycle, the number of graduates was larger than usual from a technical environment – the reform in accounting studies based on the shortening of accounting studies, the meeting between graduates in the track before the reform and those graduating in the track after the reform. When there is an excess supply, it is expected that there will be “price drops” and there were offices (not all) that took advantage of this for a small reduction in wages of up to NIS 500.
There were also offices that, against the background of the large supply and the situation in general, were tougher on raises, there were those that froze wages. But, there was no clear trend in all offices and there were no significant layoffs. After all, even the offices know that the supply was relatively large a few months ago, it is spotty.
What will happen next?
The big firms “live” on the interns. They will always convey that there is a need for a profession and that those who study will find a job. In practice, it was true, but not for the right reasons. The volume of those interested in and learning accounting is decreasing and to deal with the situation – the bar is decreasing. The requirements and changes in the curriculum and exams, brings graduates who once had no chance of passing the exams.
That is, there is still sufficient quantity, but the quality has suffered. The question is what will happen next? In a world of technological revolution, young people want to study in technological tracks or close to it, accounting is not seen as such, despite the changes it undergoes. The paths of accounting have been cut in the last decade, and as mentioned, they still reach a sufficient number of graduates. Even if there is a decrease in the number of learners, this will be connected to lower needs over time for the offices that will become more automated.
Beyond that, a large part of accounting students do not consider themselves an “accountant”. They come to acquire the knowledge that is important to the business world. Accounting is the language of business, but some of them are not aiming for an accounting career. but a business career. So the world of accounting is changing, the accountant is changing, and still – there is a need, there are a variety of options for accounting students, so it seems that despite all the changes around, this profession will change, but there will still be the business language school.
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