Katherine Culligan is an accounting technician with the City of Deltona
in Florida. She's been in that role for about eight years. She started in
the accounts payable department.
Like many accounting technicians, Culligan studied accounting at a community
college. She earned a two-year associate's degree.
"I had taken a bookkeeping course in community college, and debits and
credits were just something I was able to grasp easily and I enjoyed," she
says. "We did practice sets, and we did the books for different businesses,
and I kind of liked that variety, so then I decided to pursue my associate's
in accounting."
After a few years, Culligan decided to also earn a bachelor's degree in
business management. "I was working in the budgeting and grants area, so that
helped improve my chances for promotion within the City," she explains.
As an accounting technician for the City, she has many different responsibilities.
She works a lot with different grants. She also analyzes accounts and prepares
information for auditors. Her work varies throughout the year.
"It's different depending on where we are as far as the budgeting and the
financial reporting process is concerned," says Culligan. "Right now we've
been working on preparing our budget and doing the background information
for the budget.
"And we have our interim audit, so our auditors are here, and I'm working
on pulling account information for that, so they can do the interim review
where they do a test of transactions and look through what the total capital
expenditures are for the year."
Accounting technicians often deal with routine matters. But big challenges
come up from time to time.
"Right now it's challenging because we're trying to do more with less as
far as budgets are concerned," says Culligan. "And trying to get as much information
as they need so they can make good decisions as far as what they (the various
city departments) think their cash needs are going to be.
"And sometimes the challenge is the time constraints that you have to deal
with," she says. "You're not always given as much time as you want to do things.
I think that's probably one of the [most challenging] aspects of it -- working
with time constraints in preparation for meetings and so forth."
Culligan says accounting technicians need to pay attention to details.
And they also need to just "go with the flow" sometimes. "[Be] prepared for
the unforeseeable," she adds. "Just sort of [be] flexible. We do all sorts
of things. Because our department has been downsized, like everyone else,
we have to do different things that we may not have had to do in the past.
Flexibility, as with every job, is important."
Gwen McFarlane says patience is also very important. She has her own bookkeeping
business.
You need patience when dealing with people who bring you a grocery bag
full of papers or a shoebox once a year, says McFarlane. "Patience to interpret
the stuff." She says accounting technicians and bookkeepers also need to
be people who can communicate why they're doing something.
"Because some people just see bookkeeping as an expense," she says. "They
don't see the value that a bookkeeper can bring to them by explaining to them
what they're doing, or perhaps giving them some advice -- not the professional
advice that [would require] an accountant, but there are things that we can
show them and explain to them. Help them to understand what's happening in
their business, what they've been doing, why they don't have any money left.
Well, here's where you spent it!"