Careers In Accounting

If you are working in accounting and finance, you will inevitably be put in a position at some point where you need to make a choice:

• Business Services;

• Commerce

I thought it worthwhile to give a very brief overview of each and what careers are actually like.

Professional services can loosely be defined as consulting, and in the context of accounting, is working for a firm that sells services to businesses, for the purpose of this, we will focus on business services.

Commerce can be defined as all other businesses. If you have heard of the business, chances are it is commerce.

I started out recruiting senior commercial finance roles within FMCG, Retail and oddly enough insurance. I have placed CFO’s with ASX top 50 businesses and senior commercial manager roles with ASX top 5 businesses.

Over the last few years I have been more heavily focused on professional services however I do still recruit roles in commerce.

Careers In Commerce

I’m not going to lie, talking to CFO’s and Commercial Managers is far more interesting to me than talking with an intermediate accountant at a 10 staff accounting firm.

From how data is used at the checkout to influence product placements around a store through to how insurance risk is assessed, the types of projects, and the budgets they have, are genuinely interesting.

Roles in commerce can be excellent for people who are using accounting as a stepping stone to get into an operational role and move away from finance altogether.

That being said, there can be a real price to pay. I recall meeting a Senior Commercial Manager who had been in a role with an ASX Top 10 business for 7 months and he had not seen the sun for that period of time. He was earning 250K+ Bonuses.

We were able to help him move to a role with significantly better work life balance.

In general, I would say that it is far easier to earn 130K in commerce than professional services but far harder to earn 250K.

Roles in commerce are excellent for people who have a real passion for a specific industry.

Careers In Business Services

It used to be the case that business services was more about completing compliance work which a lot of people get sick of pretty quickly.

In addition to compliance, the majority of business services firms are shifting the focus from compliance to advisory services. This means that, you are often working with $20-$100M as an outsourced FP&A function.

The majority of business services roles will have a mix of tax compliance for businesses between 5-20M along with CFO advisory (management reporting and analysis) for larger clients.

The real benefit of working in business services is you have far more agency over what your work life balance is going to be like and I would argue that it is easier to move out of business services than any other service line in professional services.

While yes, it can be harder for you to get to 130K in professional services, it is far easier to get to 250K.

If you are the type of person that would be going for Commercial Manager or CFO positions in commerce, you can earn more money as a Senior Manager or Partner in an accounting firm, you will have significantly more control over your work life balance and to be frank it is not as competitive (i.e. there are only 200 Group CFO's in the ASX 200, there are 1000's of Senior Managers in professional services).

Everyone's situation is different and the above is general advice, if you are interested in discussing any of the above or just have a question, please get in contact peter@halbowman.com.au and we will provide a detailed response.