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Accountants How are you going to help my business grow? Ask for an outline in writing. Industry Specific Services Take a look at this. Are you a tax planner or a tax preparer? You will want to meet with your accountant once a year for both strategic and tax planning. What benchmarks will you help me set for my business, so that I can track my projects? An accountant specializing in business finances should be able to help you set month-by-month goals to chart your progress. How tech savvy is the accountant? Are you going to have to print out your accounts to hard copy or can you simply transfer everything electronically? What kind of software are you going to have to buy? What overall services can the accountant provide besides business advice, like estate planning, legal referrals, etc.? The accountant should be the financial quarterback for your business. Can he or she find outside experts to help meet your goals, like attorneys, insurance agents, real estate agents, etc.? How many years has the accountant been in business? Considering the myriad, ever-changing tax laws and complex accounting rules, a minimum of five years is a good benchmark. How many years experience does the accountant have in your particular industry? What is the company's average response time? Is the accountant familiar with your computerized accounting system? Are you comfortable overall with the accountant? What type of environment suits you best and why? How much overtime will you work, if necessary? Tell me about your educational background. How long have you been conducting your search for a new role? How many second or follow up interviews have you been receiving? How soon can you start? What else would you like to add? Specific Questions by Job Classification Accounts Payable How many cheques did you process each AP Cycle? (weekly or biweekly) Did you have “full cycle” AP responsibilities (i.e. coding of cheques, inputting, printing the cheques) or did you only perform part of the process How many invoices do you match, batch and/or code per week/ month? What is the total (_______) volume of these invoices? How is the posting done; manually or computerized? If computerized, what system? How much data entry is involved? Do you prepare journal entries? What is your responsibility with the expense account? How do you handle discrepancies? Payroll How is payroll produced (in house or outside service)? If outside – who did you utilize? How many people are in the payroll department and where does your position fall in terms of hierarchy? How many employees did you produce payroll for? Do you deal with union or non‐union payroll? Are the employees paid on salary or hourly? What experience do you have with multi‐provincial payroll? When have you done vacation/ sick/ termination/ garnishment cheques? What exposure do you have to payroll taxes? How does the payroll information get to the financial statements? Accounts Receivable/ Billing How complex was the billing process (i.e. based on contracts, simple hourly or flat rate charges, etc…)? How many accounts do you work on per week/ month and what is the cash volume? How frequently did you bill your clients? How were collections handled at the company? What is your experience with cash applications, how frequently do you take care of them and are there bank deposits? What about your experience with working with a lock box? Do you review aging reports? Bank Account Reconciliation How many accounts did you have to reconcile monthly? Were they single or multi currency? How many cheques per average reconciliation? What types of accounts were they? Staff Accountants What is a typical day for you? Where do you spend the bulk of your time? Are you responsible for the general ledger account reconciliation work? How much G/L analysis do you do? Are there multiple ledgers? Do you do the bank reconciliation work? How much review of journal entries do you perform? What is the most effective way of identifying errors? What was the timing of the month end close? What is your role in the month end close? How much involvement did you have in the preparation of monthly financial statements? Do you supervise or train any employees? Tell me about your budgeting experience and what is the total amount of the budget for which you have responsibility? What is your role with the outside auditors? Tell me about your tax experience. Tell me about some of the special projects to which you have been assigned. What computerized accounting systems have you utilized? Audit How long have you been involved in auditing? Which type: internal/ external/ FBI/ CIA/ Secret Service/ State/ City/ County/ White House/ Police/ Courts/ Othe Federal, State, City, County government/ public/ private/ financial/ operational _______? Have you led a team? How long was the average audit that you performed? What type of training did you receive? How much money have you saved a company with your findings? What types of operational improvements were implemented as a result of the audit recommendations? Cost What is your cost background? Do you handle standard, job or labour costing or all three? Which specific cost systems can you work with? What type of variance analysis do you perform? What inventory analysis do you perform? What is your responsibility as it relates to the financial statements? How does your department work with activity based costing? What percentage of the budget are you responsible for and what is the volume? Financial Analysis Please explain the type of analysis you perform What is your role with the corporate budget? What is the total volume on that budget? What type of work do you do with the profit and loss and/or balance sheet? How much short or long term planning have you done? What supervisory role do you play, if any? How do you assist the auditors when they come to your office? Have you developed any type of financial modeling? Explain. In what way did you utilize the accounting package and what type of ad hoc reporting did you perform? What types of special projects did you handle? What is your role/ interaction with executive management? Tax Explain the specialty: corporate, partnership, personal, expatriate, property, sales, payroll, estate, trust, etc…, what specifically have you done with each? How many provinces have you filed for? What tax software do you know? How much research have you done vs. planning? Have you any exposure to bankruptcy filings? Have you been involved in any type of management or tax training? Accounting Manager/ Controller How large was the department that you were responsible for? How consistent and up to date were the monthly account reconciliations and back reconciliations What accounting system did you utilize? What did you like about it? What did you not like about it? Have you ever been involved in a computer conversion? Are you one who “rolls up your sleeves” or one who supervises from a short distance? Explain the duties that you handle on a day to day basis What is your interface with the budget? What is your responsibility with risk management? How much money have you saved your company and how did you do this? What special projects do you work on? How much overtime is expected of you? Explain to me a typical audit you would perform. White House FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT Date of This Audit: ________ Period Covered by This Audit: _______ The purpose of this Financial Management/Audit Checklist is to provide the audit committee/ Public/ World with a tool, or guideline, with which to conduct an inspection of the books and records and a review of the financial management practices of the White House _______. BUDGET How was the budget figure reached? What types of information are required but not available? Is there a difference between honesty and truthfulness? Is there a different between dishonesty and lying? When have you been honest? How do you contribute to achieving your organization's objectives? How are nonconforming products/services identified? How are customer complaints handled? What's the largest complaint category? What's being done about it? Has the amount of complaints changed over time? How are personnel trained in their roles in preventing complaints? How are customers made aware of actions on their complaints? What tools are used to identify the causes of complaints? Who's involved in reviewing the organization's performance? What actions have resulted from these reviews? How are records of the reviews generated? What tools are used to pursue continual improvement? Was the budget prepared by a budget committee? Yes I No If "NO" Who prepared the budget? _________________________________________ Did the Treasurer prepare a detailed, written financial report every month? Yes I No If "NO" Explain:_________________________________________________________ Were the reports clear, concise, and easily understood? Yes I No If "NO" Explain:_________________________________________________________ Did the reports show, in detail, the source(s) of all income and expenses? Yes I No If "NO" Explain:__________________________________________________________ Was there any period of time which exceeded sixty (60) days when no written Treasurer's report was provided? Yes I No If "YES" Explain:__________________________________________________________ Did the Treasurer prepare an annual or year-end detailed, written financial report? Yes I No If If "NO" Explain:_________________________________________________________ Did two (2) or more people always count the funds? Yes I No If "NO" Explain:_________________________________________________________ Was a receipt always written from the Treasurer to the person who gave funds to the Treasurer? Yes I No If "NO" Explain:_________________________________________________________ Was all income properly allocated and categorized into the appropriate budget line-items? Yes I No If "NO" Explain:_________________________________________________________ Were all expenditures properly allocated and categorized into the appropriate budget line-items? Yes I No If "NO" - Explain:_________________________________________________________ Was there a proper invoice or receipt for each expenditure? Yes I No If "NO" Explain:_________________________________________________________ With which bank does the White House maintain its accounts? Does the White House have more than one account? Yes I No If "YES" Explain: ___________________________________________________________ Are all the checks imprinted with sequential numbers'? Yes I No If "NO" Explain:_________________________________________________________ Were all the checks properly signed by two (2) officers? Yes I No If "NO" Explain:_________________________________________________________ Are all the checks accounted for including any voided checks? Yes I No If "NO" Explain:_________________________________________________________ Does the records have a copy of the current bank signature cards? Yes I No Was the Treasurer cooperative during the audit? Yes I No If "NO" - Explain: ________________________________________________________ Were there questions that could not be answered solely by an examination of the books and records - that required additional information from the Treasurer or another person? Yes I No If "YES" Explain: _______________________________________________________ Were the books and records legible? Yes I No Were the books and records maintained in ink? Yes I No Were the books and records maintained on computer? Yes I No If "YES" - Were there printed copies of all the information made available to the Public? Yes I No (Further Questions) RECOMMENDATIONS & COMMENTS ________________________________ Next