Staff Accountant Salary

Considered to be one of the more prestigious positions in the accounting world.  A staff accountant works for an accountancy firm, a business that specialized in the accounting and auditing needs of publicly traded companies.  While many of these publicly traded companies handle their own accounting in-house, there is a need to check their accounting to ensure their work is accurate.  This is what accountancy firms do.  They take the numbers and figures used by the businesses (which those numbers are used to influence the price of things like stocks, affecting the general market) and make sure they are accurate.

There are several different levels of staff accountants, most of which pay a higher than average staff accountant salary than you would see in a publicly traded company, making positions like these very competitive and much harder to get.

Educational Requirements

For the majority of staff accountant jobs, you will need a minimum of a bachelor's degree in accounting, which is offered by most public and private universities.  Depending on the level of staff accountant you are trying to get, you may need a combination of a higher educational level and more experience.  Experience in key, since most entry level staff accountant will need at least one year of experience in addition to the various degrees and education required.  To further advance in the field once you have a staff account position, additional education will, including a Master's degree or doctorate in accounting will help you rise to the Junior or Senior level staff accountant, along with professional experience. Having an internship or co-op while in college is considered by many to be professional-level experience.

Those looking to become a staff accountant should have a firm grasp of standard business practices, have excellent mathematical skills, and have a strong computer skills, since the vast majority of accounting work is now done on computers. 

Staff Accountant Salary Averages

Since the staff accountant position is at a specific accountancy firm, their work is generally regarded as more complex due to the constantly adapting nature and greater responsibility of the role.  Thanks to this, the staff accountant salary is generally on a slightly higher scale than standard accountants.  The average staff accountant salary generally ranges from $35,000 to $65,000, with higher positions, like Senior Staff Accountant, pulling in more than the $65,000 annual staff accountant salary.  Many of the entry level positions you will find will start out on the lower end of the scale, but it is not uncommon to see first year staff accountants making $50,000 a year with little to no experience.  On the very extreme end of the scale, Senior Managers and Directors, those who are the very top level staff accountants, can pull in $160,000 a year.  The average staff accountant salary is still around $50,000 across the board.

There are several different factors that can affect the staff accountant's salary, mainly the size of the firm they are employed at.  Generally, there are three sizes of firms, small, medium, and large.  Naturally, the larger firms will pay staff accountant more due to the size of their clientele and the needs of their services, while smaller firms will likely pay less, on average.  The pay difference between a small and large firm is generally around ten to twenty percent of the average annual salary.  If an accountant at a smaller firm is making $40,000 annually, they will likely be paid $44,000 to $48,000 at a larger firm.  The difference between a small and medium firm is substantially less, only coming in at between 3 and 5%.

The Big 4

When it comes to large firms, there are generally four large firms left in the industry that can be considered large.  What started out as eight firms that handled the vast majority of major auditing work as now dwindled to four due to complex merger situations and various scandals.  Those firms are;

• KPMG
• Deloitte touche Tohmatsu, more commonly referred to as Deloitte
• Ernst & Young
• PricewaterhouseCoopers (all one word)