Difficult Account Manager Interview Preparation Guide

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An account manager is a person who works for a company and is responsible for the management of sales, and relationships with particular customers. The account manager does not manage the daily running of the account itself. They manage the relationship with the client of the account they are assigned to. Generally, a client will remain with one account manager throughout the duration of hiring the company. Account managers serve as the interface between the customer service and the sales team in a company. They are assigned a company's existing client accounts. The purpose of being assigned particular clients is to create long term relationships with the portfolio of assigned clients. The account manager serves to understand the customer's demands, plan how to meet these demands, and generate sales for the company as a result.

Accounting, or accountancy, is the measurement, processing and communication of financial information about economic entities. Accounting, which has been called the "language of business", measures the results of an organization's economic activities and conveys this information to a variety of users including investors, creditors, management, and regulators. Practitioners of accounting are known as accountants. The terms accounting and financial reporting are often used as synonyms.

Accounting can be divided into several fields including financial accounting, management accounting, auditing, and tax accounting. Financial accounting focuses on the reporting of an organization's financial information, including the preparation of financial statements, to external users of the information, such as investors, regulators and suppliers; and management accounting focuses on the measurement, analysis and reporting of information for internal use by management. The recording of financial transactions, so that summaries of the financials may be presented in financial reports, is known as bookkeeping, of which double-entry bookkeeping is the most common system.

★ Generate sales for a portfolio of accounts and reach the company's sales target.
★ Identify new sales opportunities within existing accounts to remain a client-account manager relationship by up-selling and cross-selling.
★ Manage and solve conflicts with clients.
★ Interact and coordinate with the sales team and other staff members in other departments working on the same account.
★ Establish budgets with the client and company.
★ Meet time deadlines for accounts .

Key accounts provide a lot of business because they contain a small number of clients which contribute a large portion of the company's sales. According to research, sales from a company's key accounts has increased from 23% in 1975 to 60% currently.

To maintain the company's existing relationships with a client or group of clients, so that they will continue using the company for business.

★ Principles of Accounting was often the title of the introductory course in accounting. It was also common for the textbook used in the course to be entitled Principles of Accounting.
★ Principles of accounting can also refer to the basic or fundamental accounting principles: cost principles, matching principles, full disclosure principles, materiality principles, going concern principles, economic entity principles, and so on. In this context, principles of accounting refers to the broad underlying concepts which guide accountants when preparing financial statements.
★ Principles of accounting can also mean generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). When used in this context, principles of accounting will include both the underlying basic accounting principles and the official accounting pronouncements issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and its predecessor organizations. The official pronouncements are detailed rules or standards for specific topics.

Nominal accounts in accounting are the temporary accounts, such as the income statement accounts. In other words, nominal accounts are the accounts that report revenues, expenses, gains, and losses. (The owner's drawing account is also a temporary account, even though it is not an income statement account.)
Nominal or temporary accounts are closed at the end of each accounting year. This means that their account balances are transferred to a permanent account. This closing process allows the nominal accounts to start the next accounting year with zero balances.

Petty Cash is a current asset account; it is part of a company's cash. A petty cash fund is established by cashing a check drawn on the company's regular checking account and giving the currency and coins to the petty cash custodian. No expense is involved in this transaction since the company is simply creating the asset account Petty Cash by reducing another asset account.
An expense occurs when the company pays the postal carrier for the postage that is due on the incoming mail. Another expense occurs when the company sends an employee to pick up some needed supplies. If these expenses are paid with money in the petty cash fund, the currency and coins held by the petty cash custodian will decrease and in place of that money the custodian will have petty cash receipts or petty cash vouchers. The expenses will be recorded in the general ledger when the petty cash fund is replenished.

Deferred revenue is not yet revenue. It is an amount that was received by a company in advance of earning it. The amount unearned (and therefore deferred) as of the date of the financial statements should be reported as a liability. The title of the liability account might be Unearned Revenues or Deferred Revenues.

Prior to electronic worksheets, accountants had several pads of paper with a varying number of columns (and rows) preprinted on them. The pads of paper were labeled as columnar pads. The preprinted paper in these pads allowed accountants and bookkeepers to easily prepare manual spreadsheets.
With the introduction of VisiCalc (the original electronic spreadsheet) followed by other electronic spreadsheets or worksheets (e.g., Lotus 1-2-3, Excel), the use of columnar pads of paper declined significantly.

Equity is used in accounting in several ways. Often the word equity is used when referring to an ownership interest in a business. Examples include stockholders' equity or owner's equity.
Occasionally, equity is used to mean the combination of liabilities and owner's equity. For example, some restate the basic accounting equation from Assets = Liabilities + Owner's Equity to Assets = Equities.

The definition of a short term or current asset is cash and other assets that will turn to cash or will be used up or consumed within one year of the balance sheet date. If a company's operating cycle is longer than one year, the definition allows for assets turning to cash, used up, or consumed during the operating cycle to be reported as a current asset.

Organic growth often refers to the growth in a company's sales that did not occur because of an acquisition of another company. Expressed another way, organic growth is the internal growth or the growth from its existing businesses-not from the businesses it acquired during the period.

The chart of accounts is a listing of the general ledger accounts to which amounts can be posted. The chart of accounts is a helpful tool for identifying the best account for recording a transaction.
In some accounting software the chart of accounts may be the means to open new general ledger accounts and to control their position in the financial statements.

Window dressing refers to actions taken or not taken prior to issuing financial statements in order to improve the appearance of the financial statements.

This financial statement is also known as the statement of operations, statement of earnings, or income statement. It reports the corporation's revenues, expenses, gains and losses (except for items stipulated as other comprehensive income) for a period of time such as a year, quarter, 13 months, etc.

This financial statement begins with the bottom line of the income statement and then lists the items considered to be other comprehensive income. Some of these items involve currency translation, hedging, available-for-sale securities, and pensions.

This statement of financial position reports a corporation's assets, liabilities and stockholders' equity as of the final instant of the date shown in its heading (December 31, January 31, June 30, etc.)

This statement reports the major causes for the change in cash and cash equivalents during the accounting period. The cash flows are presented as operating, investing, or financing activities.

This financial statement is often presented as the statement of shareholders' equity, statement of equity, statement of changes in stockholders' equity, etc. It reports all of the changes in stockholders' equity which occurred during the accounting period.

A noncurrent asset is an asset that is not likely to turn to unrestricted cash within one year of the balance sheet date. (This assumes that the company has an operating cycle of less than one year.)
A non-current asset is also referred to as a long-term asset.
Non-current assets are reported under the following balance sheet headings:
★ Investments (long-term)
★ Property, plant and equipment
★ Intangible assets
★ Other assets

A fiscal year usually refers to an accounting year that does not end on December 31. (The accounting year of January 1 through December 31 is usually referred to as a calendar year.) Some examples of the fiscal years used by U.S. corporations include:
★ The 12 months of February 1 through January 31
★ The 12 months of October 1 through September 30
★ The 12 months of June 1 through May 31
★ The 52 weeks (four 13-week quarters) ending on the Saturday closest to January 31 (This will require an occasional fiscal year of 53 weeks since 52 weeks X 7 days = 364 days vs. 365 days per year.)

Sales refers to the revenues earned when a company sells its goods, products, merchandise, etc. (If a company sells one of its non-current assets that was used in its business, the amount received is not recorded in its Sales account.)
The amounts recorded at the time of the sales transaction is also known as gross sales since there may be subsequent subtractions for sales returns, sales allowances, and early payment discounts. (Gross sales minus these subtractions results in the amount of net sales.)

One example is the disposal of a non-current asset for an amount that is different from its book value.