Senior Accounting Associate

Job description dated on: February 2^nd, 2025

Job title: Senior Accounting Associate                                                      

Department / Team: Accounting Department                                           Reports to: Accounting Manager

Position overview: The Senior Accounting Associate plays a pivotal role in fulfilling our mission by:

1. Answering questions from our clients to empower them by providing them with answers to their questions and information from our learning center.
2. Ensuring final work product for clients are free of material error and formatted in a way first time business owners will understand.
3. Being constantly curious of why things are the way they are, looking for answers to challenges both internal and external that might not always fit within the box.

Here's what you'll be doing on a typical day

• Answer questions for staff members.
• Project management, including assigning ad hoc work out to be completed.
• Review completed recurring financials and other documents for accuracy and completeness.
• Review and evaluate client books using our diagnostics tool.
• Completing and overlooking special accounting projects
• Training staff and clients on Xero, QBO, and other related platforms.
• Answering questions from clients via phone, email and/or video calls.

Preferred technical skills

• Communications:  Be able to effectively communicate with clients, team members and leadership.
• Financial statements:  Understand the difference between each financial statement (balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows), how a transaction flows through the financial statements and how a transaction could impact each of these statements.
• Financial statement analysis:  Ability to read financial statements and identify material deviations from period to period.
• Project & work management:  Understand the importance of project management, be able to keep track of work assigned to others and work promised to clients by a certain date.  Be able to utilize an cloud based project management system to keep track of and monitor work being performed.
• Accounting methods:  Understand the difference between cash basis, modified accrual and full accrual accounting.  Have a deep understanding of how transaction timing impacts this and how transactions should be recorded.
• Sales tax:  Understand how sales tax works and typical sales tax compliance related items
• Payroll:  Understand how payroll works, be able to run payroll using a third party vendor and have knowledge about payroll to answer for clients.
• Budgets & forecasts:  Create basic budgets and forecasts for clients, including being able to answer client questions and help them throughout the process.
• Accounting software:  Have a full understand of what a cloud based accounting system is and how to generally use it.  Must have a full understanding of either Xero or QuickBooks online (preferably both, whichever system is not know you'll be trained on).
• Accounting software integrations:  Understand how third party add on software works with cloud based accounting software
• Office software:  Proficiency in Word, Excel, Outlook. 

Requiredsoft skills

We expect the typical soft skills you'd see in a professional services environment, including (but not limited) to:

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• Ability to work both independently and in a team environment
• Problem-solving aptitude
• Attention to detail and a high level of accuracy
• Strong time management and organizational skills

Past work experience    

Minimum of 3 years in a staff-level accounting position, whether in public accounting, the bookkeeping industry, or private sector.

Education: Bachelor's degree in accounting is preferred but not mandatory.

Travel: Minimal travel will be required for this position.

Location & schedule   Our team builds trust with each other by openly communicating about work schedules with each other.  Specifics include:

• Hybrid position
  • 3 days in the office, with Wednesdays a required day.  Working hours 9AM-5PM.
• 2 days work from home (or the office, if you desire).  Working hours flexible.

Benefits

• Casual work attire
• Paid & sick time bucket – 20 days (years 0 through 5), 25 days (year 6+)
• Every 5 years get 5 extra PTO days to use that year
• Medical, dental & vision insurance
• Long term disability insurance (company paid)
• Life insurance (company paid)
• Paid parking in downtown Orlando
• Reimbursement of costs associated with getting professional licenses & related certificates (CPA, EA, etc.)
• Paid time off to sit for professional licenses & related certificates
• Continuing education for professional licenses & related certificates (CPA, EA, etc.)
• Paid bereavement time off
• Paid jury duty time off
• 10 company holidays:  New years day, memorial day, independence day, labor day, thanksgiving day, day after thanksgiving, Christmas eve, Christmas day, day after Christmas, new years eve.
• Quarterly firm state of the company overview & happy hour
• Weekly lunch n learns