What Is Masters in Accounting?
by admin on 23/01/12 at 1:24 am
Know the terms, titles, courses, disciplines and career related to Masters in Accounting.
Masters in Accounting is a graduate degree for accountants who are preparing to become certified public accountants.
It comes by other names such as Master of Accounting, Master of Accountancy, or Master of Professional Accountancy with the abbreviations MAcc, MAc or MAcy.
It is closely related to but more accounting-focused than an MBA in Accounting.
A Masters of Accounting program normally requires a total of 150 credit hours and would last for 18 to 24 months.
In most States, accountants are required to take a graduate program before taking the Uniform CPA (Certified Public Accountant) Exam.
MAcc programs are offered by leading universities and graduate schools.
Master’s classes are conducted once a week in the evening.
This is an important arrangement since accountants need to work during the day.
Before becoming a CPA (certified public accountant), accountant graduates can maintain private practice by offering accounting services to companies for a fee.
The best emerging form of education is online.
Online classes or distance education are primarily for working students.
Studying online allows students to be flexible, work around job schedules, and exercise independence and responsibility.
The most common courses offered in MAcc online or on-campus are graduate accounting courses, graduate tax courses and business-related subjects.
The goal is to make students confident in handling accounting issues and problems, including frauds and criminal acts.
Focus is given to accounting principles and their business applications.
While most students take the program primarily for the CPA exam, they are taught and trained so that they can take high-level and higher-paying accounting jobs someday.
They are immersed in monetary problems that may occur in the real world and guided into solving a given problem.
Other courses in the program are Income Taxation, Financial Accounting, Auditing, and Financial Management.
A variety of opportunities are easily made available to a CPA with an MAcc degree.
He or she may be hired as a company accountant, finance consultant or CFO.
A company accountant may further pursue other certifications such as a CMA (certified management accountant) or CIA (certified internal auditor).
The five most common careers that await a CPA are Public Accountant, Finance Accountant, Management Accountant, Cost Accountant, and Forensic Accountant.
To many, a public accountant job is entry-level.
This involves preparing finance, budget and audit reports for companies and filing of taxes.
Finance Accounting and Management Accounting are closely related since both are tasked in preparing monetary reports.
The difference is that reports prepared by finance accountants are for external audiences (shareholders, tax officers, investors, lenders), while those from management accountants are used internally.
Cost accountants, on the other hand, study, analyze and assess the costs of merchandise or products that are purchased, used or marketed by an organization in order to keep the organization financially stable.
Finally, a Masters in Accounting graduate is equipped to perform Forensic Accounting.
This specialized skill aims to investigate and interpret monetary reports in order to expose a fraud.
This requires high-level audit and investigative skills, and may be performed only by an experienced CPA.
