CPA/CFO
Hello,
Long time lurker here. Wanted some advice on the whether or not CPA would be relevant to CFO roles. I work in finance currently and was approached by a close friend to go into his company as a finance manager with the pathway to CFO.
How useful would a CPA be? I will be working directly with the current CFO who is a CPA who will transition into a Controller role in a year or two.
Any CPAs made this transition? This is a small tech company.
Hey Financial Rep in Risk Mnmgt, sorry about the delay, but are any of these useful:
More suggestions...
Hope that helps.
CPA would be very useful. I'm currently in TAS, but I was originally in Audit for a large regional firm. We had tons of turnover at the Senior/Manager level going to fill Controller/CFO positions at clients. CFOs are pretty much over all Fin Reporting functions so CPA designation is very valuable in that capacity. Before hitting TAS my plan was to exit to a Controller or CFO position.
I will be working closely with the current CFO and she will later transition to a Controller role...if that helps. What would you recommend in terms of reading materials/studying (besides CPA) to grasp Financial Manager - Director - CFO?
Tbh, if you use Becker study materials for the CPA that's going to be some of the best reading/work. CPA is a pretty wide ranging test. You'll take Audit (will teach about acctg processes, seeing transactions flow through the organization from beginning to end etc.), REG (tax law along with a hefty portion of business/contract law), FAR (everything you've ever wanted to know and more about Financial Accounting, this will probably have a ton of concepts that role would need to understand), and BEC (Econ, risk management, IT and Internal Controls; also all things useful to that position). Outside of the process of obtaining the CPA license I just think work experience is going to be the best way to gain knowledge. Spending my time in Audit in Public taught me an insane amount about the corporate acctg functions across all types of industries, I've since specialized and now work mainly with Financial Institutions.
Really appreciate the information. Thank you. A lot of this will be taught given our current structure and he will be hiring outside assistance when we need to expand the company. Right now it is putting out fires and reorganizing the books.
The size of the company is really relevant. If you're gonna work for a super huge Fortune 500, the CFOs tend to be CPA more often as they are managing gigantic accounting processes. If you're part of a small company and your main role is raising capital and doing deals and making sure nothing blows up in accounting, then a CPA is not as useful. Still good but not necessary. So it depends where you ultimately want to go in my opinion.
It is not a huge company. It is a small company with about 20-25 in total, comprising many developers (if not majority). Once we have a few product launches, I am certain he will look into acquisitioning/expanding/hiring new people. My focus for now would be forecasting/modeling and helping with the client phone calls to run the numbers for them.
oftentimes there is the concept of a chief accounting officer (or a controller at smaller companies) who manages a lot of the nitty gritty accounting details
a lot of companies have one of those, then a CFO who is more "strategic" in nature and might have more of a banking/strategy background
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