I stumbled into the role of assistant systems accountant many years ago and when the systems accountant role became available in my previous employment, I got the opportunity to take it up! I am part CIMA qualified (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) and throughout my finance career, I have developed a lot of experience of the wider finance functions as opposed to specific areas.

No two days are the same in this role, but some of the typical things I do are, user training - this involves teaching staff how to use the system to record financial transactions such as Purchase Orders, Good Receive Notes, Purchase Invoices or simply reporting data out of the system. This might be face-to face training sessions, over the phone support or creating hints and tips. I also focus on process improvement - understanding how data flows both within and between systems as well as what human interaction is involved. The aim is to improve the processes, so they are easy to understand and administer and as efficient as possible. To do this I must test the changes first before they can be put onto our live systems, this work in particular involves lots of exciting, mini projects. I would say the most important thing is making sure that, our processes are following guidelines set by the internal and external governing bodies.

The main thing I enjoy about my role is a of sense achievement and generally getting things done! Usually, there are only ever one or two systems accountants in an organisation, so having support networks are very useful to be able to share ideas with people across the UK.