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Accounting consultant vs consultant

The differences between accounting consultants and consultants can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 2-4 years to become both an accounting consultant and a consultant. Additionally, a consultant has an average salary of $78,912, which is higher than the $62,830 average annual salary of an accounting consultant.

The top three skills for an accounting consultant include CPA, GAAP and reconciliations. The most important skills for a consultant are customer service, strong analytical, and project management.

Accounting consultant vs consultant overview

Accounting ConsultantConsultant
Yearly salary$62,830$78,912
Hourly rate$30.21$37.94
Growth rate6%11%
Number of jobs74,894171,733
Job satisfaction-4
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 73%Bachelor's Degree, 64%
Average age4444
Years of experience44

What does an accounting consultant do?

An Accounting Consultant is a person tasked to assist the accounting department of a company. The consultant advises businesses concerning the accounting system used by the organization. It is also through the accounting consultant's help that improvements in the accounting process are proposed, the determination of problematic areas in the workflow, possible issues in the future, and everything that needs upgrading. The accounting consultant also helps businesses conform to legal policies set about by State and Federal legislation.

What does a consultant do?

Consultants are individuals who were tapped by a company or an organization to work on a specific activity, depending on their field of expertise. They act as guides for the organization in undertaking projects that are related to their field. Consultants would usually assist organizations in planning, often giving advice when the need arises. They would, at times, take the lead in activities that involve data gathering and interpretation of data gathering results so that they can provide solid recommendations on actions that the organization may undertake. They may also guide the organization in implementing any changes brought about by their consultancy and in evaluating the effectiveness of the changes.

Accounting consultant vs consultant salary

Accounting consultants and consultants have different pay scales, as shown below.

Accounting ConsultantConsultant
Average salary$62,830$78,912
Salary rangeBetween $45,000 And $86,000Between $58,000 And $107,000
Highest paying CitySan Francisco, CAWashington, DC
Highest paying stateCaliforniaNew Jersey
Best paying companyJordan CompanyL.E.K. Consulting
Best paying industryManufacturingTechnology

Differences between accounting consultant and consultant education

There are a few differences between an accounting consultant and a consultant in terms of educational background:

Accounting ConsultantConsultant
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 73%Bachelor's Degree, 64%
Most common majorAccountingBusiness
Most common collegeUniversity of PennsylvaniaNorthwestern University

Accounting consultant vs consultant demographics

Here are the differences between accounting consultants' and consultants' demographics:

Accounting ConsultantConsultant
Average age4444
Gender ratioMale, 49.3% Female, 50.7%Male, 58.4% Female, 41.6%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 8.5% Unknown, 4.0% Hispanic or Latino, 10.8% Asian, 13.4% White, 63.0% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.5%Black or African American, 7.8% Unknown, 4.5% Hispanic or Latino, 8.7% Asian, 13.8% White, 65.0% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%
LGBT Percentage7%12%

Differences between accounting consultant and consultant duties and responsibilities

Accounting consultant example responsibilities.

  • Work independently on line of business projects to automate derivative processes and system enhancement testing.
  • Share oversight for recruitment, human resources and advertising.
  • Provide support to accounts payable department in tagging and recording of fix assets during an ERP system transition
  • Work with governance and internal audit team ensuring SOX compliance during monthly & quarterly reviews as well as the annual audit.
  • Collaborate with accounting department in monthly closing process and development of internal controls to support SOX requirements.
  • Improve audit performance of major medical center by clearing backlog of account reconciliations across multiple medical billing systems.
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Consultant example responsibilities.

  • Lead IIS tuning to get the maximum through put.
  • Manage daily data operations and customer support for SaaS web application products in Linux.
  • Manage several contractors in the development and coding of DB2 interface programs, as well as modification of the package software.
  • Manage operational incidents and changes to consistently meet SLA compliance
  • Introduce Jenkins to help automate manual deployments to multiple environments.
  • Design and code windows service to automate NRA applications email distribution.
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Accounting consultant vs consultant skills

Common accounting consultant skills
  • CPA, 15%
  • GAAP, 11%
  • Reconciliations, 8%
  • ERP, 4%
  • Shared Services, 4%
  • SOX, 4%
Common consultant skills
  • Customer Service, 10%
  • Strong Analytical, 7%
  • Project Management, 6%
  • C++, 5%
  • C #, 5%
  • Java, 5%

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