Job Responsibilities
For the past 11 years I have been responsible for the processing
of creditor accounts. This includes data processing of invoices,
the reconcilliation of creditor statements and liasion between
departments and their creditors. The bulk of the time is spent
entering invoices into the system and handling phone queries
from creditors (mostly wanting to know why their accounts have
not been paid). This is not as simple as it might sound. You can
spend whole days chasing up who actually ordered the goods and
who is going to authorise payment for them especially when so
many of the staff seem to think they can bypass the supply
system and just go into a shop and buy things in the company's
name. Reconcilliation of accounts to creditor statements takes
three to four day a month depending on how bad the account is.
There is a certain amount of staff education in the light of
when staff don't know how they should be handling accounts they
come straight to finance to find out. This can be rather time
consuming as they don't have a finance background and explaining
the Intricacies of audit requirements can be quite a
challenge.Filing also can take two to three hours a week.All
creditors have there own file and all relevant paperwork for
each one is filed in latest to oldest order. Four days a year
are spent archiving each years files which have to be kept for
seven years. As of last week I am crossing over from accounts
payable to accounts receivable. In this area I will be
responsible for the collection of all outstanding monies owed to
the company and the bulk of my time will be spent phoning
debtors whose accounts are in arrears to make sure that we get
payment for these accounts as soon as possible. I will also be
raising invoices for the bulk of services billed by our company.
The other main duty of this position is handling all phone
queries from the public about their accounts. A challenge in
itself as you need to have a good working knowledge of the whole
company and the corporate stucture to be able to find the
correct answers to a lot of these queries. Luckily I have worked
for this employer for the past seventeen years and this
experience will now stand me in good stead for the new role I am
undertaking.
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Job Requirements
I'm sorry I don't understand the nature of this question. This
survey seems to be about my workplace whereas this section would
seem to be more about an academic program. If it was intended to
find out about on the job training then I would like to say that
Ballarat Health Services is very keen to have well trained staff
and to htis end they will pay for courses for any of their staff
if they can show that the course will be of benefit to the
company as well as the staff member. Where costs are considered
to be unreasonable or not totally in the companies interest all
efforts are made to allow the staff member to attend these
courses by allowing them time off (with or without pay depending
on the reason for the course) and helping them finacially either
by part payments if the course is in house or payroll deduction
if it is not. We have a world class education department and
program with modern facilities and excellent teaching staff,
both on staff and guest lecturers.
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Uppers
Depending on the size of the organisation you get to play with lots of money.
You are relatively free to organise your work day how you want and if you do your
job well nobody hassles you. There is a lot of satisfaction in getting account
paid on time and keeping customers happy.
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Downers
Deadlines. Because so much of finace depends on month end the
last few days of the month can be very hectic and you may feel
the need to stay after hours to finish (even when they are not
paying you - although this falls under job satisfaction.) Long
periods of data entry can also get very monotonous not to
mention very hard on your back and neck.
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Lifestyle
Work hours are usually business hours, Monday to Friday. Where I work there is a
certain degree of flexibility in work hours as long as you don't abuse it. Dress
code is smart business in navy red and white. A uniform or uniform allowance is
provided in lots of cases depending on the award you are under. There are ample
social occasions for all staff to attend. Our ICU department organise a
fundraising ball every year. It is well attended and a good time is had by all.
The Social club is very active and they organise a happy hour at a local venue
once a month (two drinks and nibbles are provided free of charge to members)they
organise trips to all the big theatrical events in Melbourne and they have a
monster Christmas party each year for employees and their families. There are
also lots of events organised each year by individual departments (usually with a
fundraising aspect to them) and the entire staff are encouraged to participate.
Because our team is like a big family we also have lots of small celebrations
such as birthdays,work aniversaries, pregnancies, farewells, welcomes, after work
drinks on the boss because we have earned it and lunching out on Fridays (because
that's a good way to wrap up the week).
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Compensation
My base salary is roughly $35,000 per annum. The only other
financial benefit that we are offered is Salary packaging where
you can package a percentage of your wage and you don't pay tax
on it. There are ways of packaging the whole 100% if you don't
actually need the money to live on. Most employees package
around 30% which is a significant saving.
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Advice to Jobseekers
An interest in finance is a good start. Accounts payable is a
good start to see if this type of employment suits you. You can
go all the way to Finance Director from here if you are prepared
to put in the hours studying. My only other advice would be the
same to anyone starting out in a new job. Take advice, show
intitive, be prepared to make mistakes and to learn by them. Ask
questions - lots of questions, even if you think they are silly
or that someone may think your silly. Join in, be prepared to
become one of the team. The outlook for this occupation in the
future is very good. While IT experts are busy writing new
computer programs to streamline the accounts operation of
business there will always have to be someone there to enter the
information into the system. And there will always be bill to be
paid.
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