Salary Tools for Accountants
Recruit and maintain employees with competitive accountant salaries
Accounting salaries – like any salary – need to stay competitive in order to keep the employees you value and enable you to recruit new staff. But what is a fair salary for accountants? If you’ve been lucky enough to have had the same accountant on your staff for years and years, you may have an especially difficult time determining accountant's pay. If you are just adding an accountant position to your firm, you may not even know where to begin.Many factors come into play when determining competitive accountant compensation. Use the following tips to help you come up with basic accounting salary guidelines:
1. Use online accountant salary tools to determine the average business accountant salary based on several variables.
2. Search job boards for examples of accountants pay based on job description, locations and experience level.
3. Factor in employee benefits when establishing accounting salaries.
Determine a fair accountant salary based on job description
If you don't have a job description for your accountant positions, come up with one. Things to include are job duties, skills set and expectations. Then, use online salary tools to help you figure out what the typical accountant compensation is for a person that matches that job description. Be sure to keep the number of years of experience and job location in mind.
Try: Accounting Jobs Today has a Salary Wizard powered by Salary.com to help you determine a fair salary for accountants based on job description. PayScale lets you search for accountant salary information and provides a graph showing median accountant salaries based on years of experience. Find a detailed breakdown of accounting salaries at the U.S. Department of Labor. Find starting accountant salary ranges in the annual report from Accountemps.
Compare accounting salaries on national job boards
You can research all day long and find hypotheticals, but sometimes the best information out there are real-life examples. Check out your local newspaper's classified section or search online job boards to find accountant salary information from real job postings. Keep a log for a few weeks to see if you a pattern or average emerges. If you are in the market for hiring a new accountant, these same job boards are a great place to start your search.
Try: Find accounting industry salary information on niche boards, such as iHireAccounting or AccountingCrossing. Industrywide job boards are another good place to gather information. Check out Monster.com and Yahoo! HotJobs.
Keep employee benefits in mind when establishing accountants pay
An accountant salary is not that only thing that will attract and keep employees. Such benefits as medical and dental insurance, vacation pay, life insurance, flexible hours, casual dress and more are also key factors. Keep all benefits in mind when coming up with the salary of an accountant.
Try: Get a free subscription to Employee Benefit News to stay on top of the latest in employee benefits. The U.S. Department of Labor summarizes what types of employee benefits the average U.S. worker has access to.
- If you're a small business that is having a hard time matching the accountants pay of larger companies, tout more responsibility and room for growth to prospective employees. Offer impressive titles as another benefit.
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