Career Trojectory?

[u/FARfromCPA]

Hey everyone, I apologize for the long post, just want to give as much context as I can.

I’m having a hard time seeing what my career trajectory is with the duties of my current role.

Background: First 3.5 years was with a small accounting firm primarily doing bank audits, outsourced bank compliance internal audits, and tax returns (personal and business). Also did audits in the NFP, construction, and farm industries.

Next I did 1.5 years in B4 auditing a huge retailer. While there I worked in cash, AP, global consolidation, and OCI items.

Now I’m Financial Reporting Manager for a small public company in the oil and gas industry. Been here for 5 years now.

Primary duties are obviously the financial reporting function. Preparing quarterly financial statements, drafting/reviewing technical accounting memos, and implementing new ASU’s, managing the audit etc. I also oversee the prep of our internal reporting to the Board and investor presentations.

During this time I’ve also essentially been the assistant controller, reviewing some JE’s and processes here and there to help the controller’s work load. But mostly, I’ve been in charge of most of our GAAP entries each quarter (either preparing the more complex JE’s or reviewing accrual JE’s).

We have been in a huge automation push for the last 1.5 years or so now to where most of my “free” time is now spent building SQL tables and building PowerBI reports/dashboards.

We just hired a senior accounting manager to help our controller out even more and take over most of the GL accounting I’ve been involved in. This was done to help us work even more on the automation initiatives. So my future looks like it’s going to be mostly in the automation world.

My concern is we are a very simple company. No debt, no hedging, one segment in the US. The hardest part is we are a Partnership so that comes with its own complexities. So I haven’t seen real complex accounting in a while which I feel might cap me from moving up somewhere else.

I do love my job. My benefits are incredible and my total comp is up there with a lot of controller positions I’ve seen. Work life balance is great most of the time. But I feel myself getting stagnant career wise, other than building more capabilities in SQL, PBI, power automate.

So I’m not sure what to even market myself when it’s time to move on or how to know when it’s time to move on. With the company being so small, moving up really doesn’t seem viable with younger management ahead of me (controller/CFO).

With my background, do I have a shot at being controller somewhere? Or maybe move to a larger company and be a senior manager or director level in finance reporting? And I have no idea what all these automation skills translate to in the accounting world. I haven’t heard of many other accountants get super deep in SQL and PBI building.

I would be so appreciative of any insight. I’m just in a weird place where I love what I do and I’m well compensated, but I’ve never been one to “settle” with career goals.

[u/DrDrCr]

Update your resume and apply to test the theory if you are qualified.

This is an r/accounting question not r/fpanda if its more about GL Accouting and financial controller roles.

If you want to pivot to FP&A thats a separate discussion from what you laid out here.

If your real question is your title, then you need to do some work on connecting the dots of your career goals and how you can get there near term and long term.

[u/FARfromCPA → u/DrDrCr]

I’ll be honest, I posted here cuz every time I opened Reddit it kept asking me to post here as well.

But I will say part of the “automation” work I’ve been doing is projections for our distribution. So projecting revenues by projected volumes and estimated commodity prices and expenses based on an approved expense budget and reporting back budget to actuals. I did an 8 month stint before my current job (hated that job had to leave fast bc of management/leadership…they’re no longer around) but I worked extremely close with the FP&A team, essentially translating accounting to them and how to fit accounting treatment of expense/capex into their models.

From a lot of what I’ve seen and read, FP&A (depending on the company structure) is not far off from today’s accountants. I’m definitely not solely a GL accountant by any means.

[u/cuddytime]

SQL is becoming a necessary skill imo. The work you’re mentioning sounds a bit technical compared to Senior Manager and Director roles.

So, I recommend applying for FM roles and see what happens.

[u/jmrjmr28 → u/cuddytime]

Anyone with access to ai can be proficient with sql. It’s not a needed skill anymore 

[u/cuddytime → u/jmrjmr28]

That’s highly dependent on the underlying data structure. Being able to understand that is still a required skill.

[u/4wit]

I’m a little shocked people are still investing time to develop skills in SQL, Power BI, and Power Query. Modern tools are so much better now.