What to expect on your first Accounting Job

posting entries and performing reconciliations

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If you have no familiarity with accounting software like QuickBooks how far are you in the hole? 

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They didn't teach you QB in college?

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They didn't teach you QB in college?

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NO i went through an online program

Depends on what the job is.

If you are going into public accounting auditing, a lot of reconciliations and sending out confirmation letters. If you are going into public accounting tax, a lot of depreciation schedules and data entry.

If you going into a corporate environment, expect a lot of bank reconciliations and journal entry posting, as well as helping with month close.

Oh, and no matter where you go, you will be making a lot of C&C (copies and coffee)

Not saying this is true in your situation but a lot of times it's because client work papers suck.

I went to McNeese and hardly anyone there is going to work in B4 so they teach QB in Accounting Information Systems.

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They didn't teach you QB in college?

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I'd be shocked if any major colleges were teaching QB to accounting majors. And honestly, I'd be suspect of the quality of education they were getting if they're being taught QB as part of their program.

It's a good skill to have, especially in the smaller public firms, but most accounting majors are going to get jobs in bigger public firms and corporate jobs and most of them will never touch QB.

I worked in a small local public firm and only used QB for maybe 5% of my work. Printing Trial Balances and posting Accountant's Changes was pretty much all I did, and those are pretty elementary.

They should teach you any software that they use. You will pretty much done doing what they did last year or month. I don't feel like I learned much in college; I learned way more on the job. Maybe that's just me though.

That's a good one.


I apologize I didn't know that QuickBooks wasn't a thing taught at most schools. McNeese tends to teach skills that it's graduates need entering the local workforce.

I don't think that means I got shortchanged in education. I've worked for a large public accounting firm and now I work in a small niche industry office. My education has served me well and provided me the requisite skills to succeed.

As others have said, prepare to do lots of bank recs, depreciation schedules, payroll and sales tax reports, and any other menial task they can assign to you. Also, be prepared to discover that much of what you learned in college has no practical use in the "real world."