Scope and Role of a Chartered Accountant

Chartered Accountancy is a professional and a postgraduate degree course that offers huge scope for aspirants. It is one of the renowned professions prevailing in the nation. After becoming a CA, a person can choose to either be employed with a firm as an employee or they can choose to open their private practice.

Today CAs are required by every business for the overall financial management, financial advisory, and handling taxation. Some hire CAs on a full-time salary basis (giving them good packages) while others outsource their tasks to individual CA firms. The profession has various career doors open whether you opt for a full-time stable job or become the boss of your own CA consultancy firm.

Popular areas for practicing Chartered Accountancy

Once a student clears CA exams, he/she can practice in some of the most popular areas which include:

• Direct tax practice
• Indirect tax practice
• Accounting
• Concurrent Audit of Banks
• Statutory Branch Audit of Banks
• Central Statutory Audit of Banks
• Stock and receivable audit of borrowers on behalf of banks
• Revenue audit of bank branches
• Internal audit of PSUs
• Tax audit, GST audit
• Development of Accounting Manual, Audit Manual, Budget Manual, etc for clients.
• Pre Audit

Why CA is a good career option?

CA is considered a good career option as this professional degree course offers you the flexibility to go on with higher education such as CFA, MBA, and more. There are no restrictions on study hours as you don’t have to visit a college to study. Also, you can easily control the pace of your study and preparations without stressing yourself. Apart from offering various employment opportunities, the best part about pursuing the CA course is that it makes you a postgraduate! Years of hard work and sweat you put during your CA exam preparation, not only make you a qualified CA but also make you a postgraduate as well. Great, right?  

Articleship is a compulsory feature of the CA curriculum because it provides you with practical experience and knowledge. Most CAs tend to become entrepreneurs after acquiring the needed experience as they like to be their boss. If you aren’t interested in becoming an entrepreneur, you can always become a tax adviser and a consultant as well.

One of the prime aspects of the CA course is that you can easily keep up with consistency. If you want to take breaks, then you can surely afford to take breaks and offs. Also, you can come back after brushing up and enhancing your knowledge as per the current scenarios.

Role of a Chartered Accountant

A well-skilled Chartered Accountant plays an essential role and handles different financial duties in a firm. They perform duties such as Auditing & Assurance, Tax consultancy, Accounting services, Finance outsourcing, and Financial reporting.

Almost every registered company or firm under the Company Act has a CA that ensures to manage of different tasks like Financial Controllers, Finance Managers, Financial Advisers, or Directors that inspect their accounts.

Chartered Accountants can work in all the sectors of the industries including public, private, and government. But wherever they work, their prime role /task is to reduce the amount of tax you pay each year with proper tax planning. If proper information is provided to them and if they have all the facts at their fingerprints they can put up this information to good use and plan on how you can save money in the long run. A good CA will always come up with a great strategy to enable you to save for future events. 

However, there are a few areas that CAs specifically take care of, such as: 

• Accountancy and Auditing: Accountancy is the mainstream of CAs. This being one of the most important functions include tasks from simple bookkeeping to complex financial scrutiny, writing up accounts, making financial statements, and many more.  CAs are auditors who very carefully examine the financial health of the business to conclude its risk and scopes. Auditing entails reviewing of business unit’s financial data and checking the validity of the documents.
• Taxation and Cost Accountancy: This is another crucial function/task which a CA performs. CAs furnish returns, manage all tax assessments and liabilities on behalf of the business unit. They even provide general advice to clients dealing with taxation issues. CA is the one who seals the cost of production or other processes involved in a project. In a business, he guides with cost management, cost control, price setting, etc. to management and helps in the financial goals of the company/organization.

• CA determine the Financial Status of a Firm: Apart from the above-stated functions, CAs also critically examine the company’s financial documents to determine its financial status. They conduct the course to study the business and conclude whether the business is in a loss or profit. They also help with suggestions related to market risk management. They guide the companies in attaining proper efficiency in the management, to increase profits and to find out the probabilities of declining profits, etc.

So, if you are planning to become a CA, then you should be ready to put in your best efforts with utmost dedication as becoming a CA requires 4.5 years of dedicated training and studies.