Скачать или смотреть A Market Study of the Accounting Occupation

Manufacturers, bankers, lawyers, accountants, and web designers considering investing in a new business, would normally be expected to conduct a marketing study before making an investment.

However, people embarking on a new career in these same fields, generally rely on prospective employers, professional associations, and business schools to inform them about opportunities in their chosen field.

Their websites, information sessions, and brochures are really sales tools, designed to encourage prospective entrants in a field to invest in their particular course of studies or professional program. They are not objective and unbiased. In our view they should not be relied on – at least not uncritically.

Without experience in a particular occupation, it is hard for students to make an informed choice about something as important as a career choice. This presentation is meant for people considering and investment in an accounting business, or in a career as an accountant in public practice, or in industry.

In 2018, Wasp Barcode Technologies released a report entitled Small Business Report - Accounting.

In our view, the information contained in the report is invaluable for accounting practitioners in this country. Unfortunately, they pulled the report from their web website a few years ago.

Luckily, we happen to save much of the data from the report and are able to present it here.

I read from the introduction prepared by the company:

“Every year small businesses are faced with challenges in taxes, accounting and outsourcing financial services. Wasp Barcode Technologies surveyed 393 small business leaders to create a business accounting report to share the thoughts of small business owners.

Wasp's goal in conducting the survey was to continue to bring crucial data such as the small business report to small business owners so they can make more informed business decisions.

This free report provides data to give a better understanding of the small business accounting landscape."

The study clearly had two different aims:

To help the company understand the market for their product

To help them connect with prospective customers for their product

Why is it relevant for people interested in the accounting services industry?

They believed that their barcode scanning system had the most relevance for companies with more sophisticated inventory systems – and with the skilled accountants needed to oversee those inventory systems

They reported on the roles of both internal and external accountants, the type of services management outsourced, and their satisfaction with the services that were outsourced

For what it’s worth, the results of the study also align with my own understanding of the market, developed during 40 years as a tax auditor and tax practitioner.

In short, the study provided insights that all of those interested in accounting as an occupation – including prospective entrants into the field – should find valuable.

While these ‘professional’ organizations inevitably claim that Unfortunately, most suffer from cognitive biases when it comes to understanding the world around us. Mostly these ‘cognitive biases’ are the result of ‘wishful thinking’ on the part of the observer. Each of us plays our own part in the world. We’d all like to believe that we’re more important than we are.

This is true of academics, of government policymakers, business schools, professional associations, practitioners – and most members of virtually any group that you could name.

The size of a business is a key determinant of a business’ management information and tax compliance needs. Our smallest businesses are very important to Canada’s economy and their needs for information and regulatory compliance differ a great deal from those of their larger siblings.

About 78% of firms in the accounting services industry have only one or two practitioners. Their clients are not much bigger than they are. Fully 76% of Canadians are either self-employed or employed by small business. In 2018 there were about 3.87 million Canadians in this group. The average size of businesses they worked for was only about 7 people.

For that reason, understanding this business demographic should be vitally important for business schools, professional organizations, policymakers and others involved in occupational training and licensing. In my experience this simply isn’t the case.

There are many possible explanations for this. However that’s beyond the scope of this presentation.

The WASP BARCODE STUDY examines some shared characteristics of small businesses with between 11 and 100 employees. They ignore the very small businesses that make up the greatest part of Canada’s small business sector.

Still the findings represent important insights into the market for accounting services