It is no news that accountants play vital roles in all forward-thinking organizations, either small, medium, or large scale. The criticality of their role emanates from the definition that accounting is the orderly and comprehensive recording of fiscal transactions of an organization. Financial records are to be kept clean and up to date to keep the business afloat.
These records play a vital role in the day-to-day running of a business as they help to track revenue and expenses, ensure statutory compliance, and provide investors, management, and government with quantitative financial information that is useful for decision-making.
Many Small/Medium scale organizations appreciate the above importance but a good number fail to have the pre-requisite knowledge to measure the performance of these professionals, who by their trade are distinguished as special service providers. This results in poor choices in this area, leading to incomplete and inaccurate data and hence poor decisions.
My organization fell into this category as I have had no interest in Accounting most of my career and successfully avoided it or received a “let my people go” grade anytime I had to take a related course or examination. This same nonchalance crept into my organization from the start as I depended on third parties to both recruit and manage our accounting activities. This made forecasting difficult and also any form of decision-making was devoid of data but on mere calculated guesses and intuition.
My first intensive week at LBS exposed me to the rudiments of accounting in such a way that melted away my fears of accounting and revealed the minimum criteria for the performance measurement of our personnel. This initiated my first real assessment of our accountant which fell far below par. It did not take much time for me to identify several flaws in our entries but more importantly, the personnel’s inability to make proper corrections. A few weeks of training afterward with no significant changes saw my management make a critical decision for replacement.
The replacement process was now less dependent on any third parties as we could internally determine our expectations and identify individuals who might be able to deliver the same. The only other thing to find out was their attention to detail, commitment, Character, and general attitude to work. After a few weeks, a suitable replacement was made with high hopes of proper documentation and more accurate decision-making.
The appreciation of the account statements now gives a clear overview of the organization’s position and direction. We can make guided decisions and also identify errors in inputs which was not the case hitherto. There is still a lot to learn as we progress toward the final lap of our first semester, however, several hurdles have been crossed towards a more productive business entity.
This makes it clear that for any forward-thinking management executive, the basic knowledge of accounting and the ability to read and understand the major account statements is essential to success as a leader. This also helps to ensure that the right decisions are made thereby creating a sustainable business entity.
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