UNLV Accounting Case Study

When most people hear “accountant” they imagine a sunlight-deprived, backroom, number-cruncher whose condemned to a life of long math, and staring at excel sheets. Fortunately, this is not true. Accounting is a diverse field with a plethora of different responsibilities that range from investigating tax fraud in large corporations to providing critical analysis of data to financial decision makers. Despite the wide range of jobs in the accounting profession, UNLV’s accounting major prepares its students for any direction they wish to take with a wonderful array of internships, clubs, and programs. According to the Oxford Dictionary, accounting is “the action or process of keeping financial accounts (2016).” In reality the definition is much more complicated. Each branch of accounting is unique, and must be explained separately to fully understand their roles. The four most common types of accounting according to UNLV professor, Daniel Siciliano, are public, corporate, internal auditing, and government. By far the most common branch of accounting is public accounting. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that almost twenty-five percent of accountants work in public accounting (Wiley, 2013). Public accountants work at commercial firms like Deloitte, Pricewaterhousecoopers, and Ernst & Young that provide expertise and services to …show more content…
Corporate (also known as private) accountants focus on recording the costs of business operations, creating financial reports for managers and financial analysts, and providing crucial analysis to business leaders (Brooks, 2015). This allows businesses to have a better understanding of their costs and assess their performance. Hiring a corporate accountant instead of contracting it out to a public accountant allows companies to receive more in depth analysis and provide constant accounting