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I am the controller of a division of a tire manufacturing company. It's a company that is based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. I am a controller of some of the business components of my division.

I am in charge of safeguarding the assets in the divisions that I oversee. These include the fixed assets, the inventory, and the accounts receivable and payable. There are a variety of pieces in each section, and I am responsible for insuring the accuracy and dollar flow of each of those sections. I also work on some of the proposals that we provide for our customers. I handle the internal audits that are required from our corporate headquarters to make sure we meet our requirements so they can properly sign off on the divisions.

There is usually one controller at every large business. There may be managers of accounting and there may be a director of finance but a controller is a step up. Some small divisions have a manager of finance but it is uncommon to find companies that have more than one controller.

Actually, one of our divisions in England is being audited this Thursday, and I will have to manage that. We have an auditor coming to review the information from that company during the 2007 period. We have internal audits once a year, and government audits two or three times during the year. We also have our own internal audit system in which people in our company audit themselves in hopes of supporting the system that monitors all of our assets.

Our executive team at our division would benefit the most. They are responsible for signing off on our reports, so it is important to them that I am accurate. If I had errors in my data, they would find errors during an audit and that would cause a variety of problems. At the same time, I report some of our business information to our employees, as well as our customers, so we can assure our customers that our information is accurate and trustworthy.

There are times when I have multiple requirements from multiple people due at the same time. I work with my boss, and I am responsible for dealing with his schedule and finishing whatever he needs me to do. I have people who work underneath me, so we have to reprioritize if there are too many things going on. Sometimes I have to tell people that we will not be able to get that project done due to time constraints. I try to tell them that I can get it done, but sometimes it may be a little bit farther down on my list of things to do. That seems to be a problem more and more. People want things done so fast these days that sometimes my team can't get it all done.

My boss is the Vice President of Finance. He is at the top of my division, which is around a half-billion dollar division. He reports directly to our president. He also has a dotted line responsibility to our controller. I am in the Aircraft Landing System division, and my boss reports directly to the president of this division. He deals with everything that the president of the division requires, and the things he can't get done are sent down to me.

Finance is broken down into four major groups. We have a receivable department that handles all of our invoices and our collection of money from our customers. I have an accounts payable department that is responsible for the payroll and paying all of our suppliers. I have a manager of cost accounting and pricing; she is responsible for the inventory and the pricing of all of our contracts. I also have a manager of accounting, who is responsible for our fixed assets and our taxes. These four groups make up the team that I control.

It is a pretty low-key atmosphere. We are a large company that works in a small town. A lot of the people in the finance department have been there for quite a few years. I have currently been here 25 years, and I have two people that work for me that have been here even longer. There are systems in place that assist in getting our jobs done. It's very relaxed, so it makes it easier for people to relate to each other on a daily basis. There are pockets of time that require the workplace to get a little more intense, mainly due to reports that have to be turned in to our corporate office.

It is business casual. There are a few times when customers come in when we are required to wear jackets and ties, but most of the time it's just slacks and dress shirts.

The majority of my time is spent in front of my computer in my office. Most of the people in my department depend on a computer to get their work done. We have a lot of different programs installed on our computers that are important for all of our projects. I also spend time in my boss's office discussing current and future projects. I spend pockets of each day checking in with the people that work for me. I am usually somewhere in the plant, but there are certain occasions when I am not at my desk.

I really liked and felt comfortable doing accounting in high school. I went to the University of Iowa and received a business degree, and I wanted to find a job in accounting. I didn't want it to be a job in public accounting, because I really did not like the audit part of the job. I wanted to be dealing with numbers in a business atmosphere. My father in law found an accounting job for me as a cost accountant, which was a job that I really enjoyed. Over the 25 years I have worked here, I've worked hard and have made my way up the organizational chart.

I was a cost accountant for seven years, and I dealt strictly with our proposals to our customers and our inventory. That includes costing inventory, cycle inventory and audits by the government. We had a restructuring of our business in the early 90s, and our vice president created a controller position for the division and moved me into that spot. That was when we were a $100,000,000 business. Since that time we've had divisions merge, and our division is now a $500,000,000 segment of one of the world's largest tire manufacturers. I've remained a controller through that time, but I now supervise more people.

The only job I could be promoted to would be a Vice President of Finance. Unfortunately, my company likes to move people around within different businesses. If I wanted to proceed to be a vice president, I would probably have to leave Iowa, and I am not interested in that. I'm pretty comfortable with what I am doing. I could put my name out there for a vice president position, but that would require relocation, and my family is not ready to do that at this point in time.

It is somewhat normal in that most people start out in one segment of the business, whether it's in audit or general accounting, or in my case, cost accounting, until they understand all aspects. I think that it is pretty important for a controller to understand the many different people she will come in contact with, and how to deal with the entire business flow so you will be prepared to control the assets of the company.

I was always good at math and being good with numbers is required in accounting. An accountant needs to be able to deal with data. There are a lot of rules to follow, so you need to be somewhat dedicated too. The rules are in place to control the assets of a company so it doesn't go bankrupt. There are rules you have to live by, and your responsibility is to follow those rules in order to make sure your business is successful.

Our business hours are 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., but I usually get there a little after 7:00 a.m. We are typically allowed a ten minute break in the morning and afternoon, but I usually spend that time talking with other employees. I also have a 30-minute lunch break in the middle of the day. I usually am there until 5:00 or 6:00 p.m., and I also spend an occasional three or four hours at work on the weekend. Sometimes there are big projects that will take up a lot more time, so I will spend a significant number of hours at work in hopes of getting projects done.

I turn on my computer to check my schedule to see what meetings I need to attend that day. I also check the priority of projects that are on the to-do list, and I try to schedule my day in terms of what projects to work on first. I also check my emails and voicemails from the overnight hours.

The variety on a day-to-day basis can change based on the people I work with on a particular day. I work with a variety of different people and divisions, but we do the same tasks year after year. We learn new systems that give us different ways to get our information. We need to get the same information every year, but we find better and more accurate ways to get that information. The challenge is always to do more work with less people and to create a system that eliminates a lot of the manual requirements of the job.

Right now we are in the middle of our year-end closing. We are on a calendar system, a 12-month closed calendar. At the end of the year we have to close all of our accounts and provide those numbers to the company. We are on a seven-day calendar and we have to provide the income statement on day five of the week and the balance sheet on day seven. I am currently in the midst of closing the books, as well as providing lists of quarterly and yearly reports to the company. This is in addition to the normal day-to-day requirements.

Starting at a cost accountant position, you will look at between $40,000 and $60,000 a year. If you move up to a manager's role you could make between $65,000 and $85,000 a year. Controllers usually make from $90,000 to $150,000, depending on the city you work in.

There are a few bonus packages that are created based on the success of your particular division. There is also a gain-sharing program that is tied to the amount of earnings a division makes, and there are criteria that need to be met. If those criteria are met, all people involved in the gain-sharing plan receive a lump sum payment.

It ranges from around 45-50 hours on a normal week to 60-70 hours when there is a major event that needs to be handled. Each year we have times when the hours are going to be much longer, because there are a lot of projects that need to be done. We try to combine our work so we can minimize the amount of hours that people have to stay.

I do pockets of travel a few times a year. Recently I was made controller of a division in Arizona, so that has added a significant amount of travel the past six months. I travel to our corporate office occasionally, as well as to visit some of our customers. I also travel for seminars and training now and then.

If we have visitors or other employees in town, I am asked to spend the evenings with them. There may be business community events or controller meetings that I must attend. There are also training sessions that may require me to work out of the office and on some evenings. But all of these occasions are minimal, and it is common for me to be able to go home at night and forget about work.

The stability of the work has been great at this company. There are periods of time when the work is quite low, and I have to stop hiring people or start letting people go. For the most part, my career has been in a pretty stable environment.

Vacation is earned based on years of service. When I started, I got two weeks. As I worked my way up, I reached the maximum of five weeks. Usually, I take vacation a few times during the year for a couple of days at a time. I recently took a trip to California in October, and I like to take days off during the holidays to increase the amount of time that I am away. I also like to take a week off every quarter, depending on the amount of work required.

I would like to retire when I finish paying off my house. I have a 401(k) plan and a pension plan set up through the company. I can retire with full benefits at 59 years old, which is still ten years away. My goal is to retire before I turn 60.

The best part is the challenge. I also like being able to work with a variety of people. I don't sit at my desk for eight hours a day. I get to move around and talk to different people constantly. There is a lot of interaction with different people every day. There are always things that are changing to make the work different. I always find a new way to do my work.

It has changed my job in that I have had to learn a lot of different functions for a lot of different platforms. I use several different software programs, and I have to be proficient in all of them. It is a matter of manipulating and understanding data with a variety of different tools. It is always changing, and there are always upgrades to our programs. I need to be up-to-date on everything.

As a controller, it is important to realize how important it is to deal with people and make sure they are doing their job the right way. There are a lot more reviews that need to be done than I ever thought there would be. It is also a faster-paced business than I thought it would be. There is more information and more data to be reported in a shorter amount of time.

To be a controller, a person needs a four-year degree in finance or accounting so he can understand all of the aspects of accounting. It would be good to have audit training so you know everything that goes into audits. It would also be good to have a background in some sort of cost accounting or general accounting. CPAs are also a benefit, because there are a lot of things you learn in trying to get a CPA certificate.

A person would need to be organized, patient, and meticulous in their understanding of data so they don't make errors. A controller needs to be able to accept responsibility for their data and the errors that they might make. You would also need to know how to deal with people. A person also needs to have a tremendous amount of integrity and know what is best for the company. You almost need to be a referee, in terms of knowing when you might have to tell people no in order to make sure the business benefits the most.