Jobs in Finances and Controlling

The most important goal of any business is to achieve financial profits and operate profitably. In order to determine and optimize profitability, companies have departments that are responsible for systematically recording, monitoring and processing all operational performance processes and the resulting cash and performance flows. The focus is on process analysis and optimization in order to keep costs low and increase profits.

These tasks fall into the field of accounting (often abbreviated as RW or REWE), which is divided into 4 subcategories:

1. external accounting
2. Internal accounting (controlling)
3. Statistics and comparative calculations
4. Planning calculation

The tasks in the area of finance and controlling are very diverse and sometimes very closely linked to relevant decision-making processes of the management. They therefore have a direct influence on the company’s success. Accordingly, specific training or degrees are essential in this professional field. There are strict legal and tax requirements in external accounting that must be adhered to. In internal accounting, analyzes and forecasts are created that have a direct influence on management decisions and therefore require both business know-how and mathematical and statistical knowledge. This is the only way employees in this area can grasp, express numerically and analyze the complex relationships.

As a result, many jobs in the finance sector require completed academic training, for example in finance/controlling, business administration, economics or similar courses. For positions with a focus on data analysis, the fields of study mathematics, statistics or new courses such as data science also offer excellent entry opportunities.

The daily tools used by controllers, accountants and the like in their everyday work are so-called ERP programs (enterprise resource planning software, e.g. SAP) or tools for data analysis and preparation such as Excel, Access or Power BI. Appropriate user knowledge is therefore in great demand.

Despite the high complexity of this professional field, not every worker in this segment needs a degree. Classic commercial training is particularly required for jobs in accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll accounting. In some cases, IHK-certified additional qualifications in accounting are required.

One thing is clear: the professional field of finance and controlling is very diverse. A careful way of working and an affinity for dealing with numbers offer an excellent basis for professional fulfillment in this segment.

External accounting is dedicated to making payments, documenting them and preparing any values that contribute to a company's assets. The task of external accounting is to realistically present the actual financial situation. It is subject to strict commercial and tax law requirements, so that the majority of the activities can only be carried out by trained specialists. Specific activities can be derived from the sub-areas included:

• Financial accounting (FiBu for short): It essentially consists of accounts payable accounting and accounts receivable accounting. The accounts payable department is responsible for all incoming invoices to the company. This includes those processes in which payment obligations have to be settled. Accounts receivable, on the other hand, is responsible for outgoing invoices in order to claim the monetary value of the company's services provided. Other areas of financial accounting include payroll accounting for processing wages and salaries and, lastly, asset accounting, in which the long-lived assets of the company's fixed assets are recorded and managed. These include, for example, stocks (inventory), machines and buildings. Asset accounting evaluates their values, which are reduced over time through depreciation.
• Balance sheet accounting: Balance sheet accounting is superior to financial accounting in that it takes a holistic view of income and expenses in the form of the profit and loss statement (P&L) and calculates the annual financial statements and balance sheet from the sum of all payments. The annual financial statements show the overall economic situation and the tax burden of the company.]

Internal accounting is often also referred to as controlling. The term controlling is derived from the English: to control = to control, to regulate, to direct, to monitor. As a result, controlling monitors the company's internal cost situation. Unlike external accounting, no strict government regulations apply here. Internal accounting only serves the internal planning, control and coordination of company processes with the aim of maximizing the company's success in the future. For this purpose, the company's current situation is recorded and an attempt is made to draw conclusions from it for an improved target situation in the future. Accordingly, controlling often works directly for management by creating fact-based decision-making principles.

In larger companies there is often another category in accounting: business statistics and comparative calculations. The internal key figures from internal and external accounting are classified for comparison purposes. As a comparison, market figures, for example from competitors, or our own key figures from previous business periods, for example the previous year, are used in order to better classify the financial situation.

In the planning calculation, concrete budget plans are created for the coming business period based on the existing data from previous years in order to define the cost framework for investments and expenses and to be able to create forecasts for future results.