Chief Financial Officer

Asking candidates to sum up your company and their industry knowledge will give you insight into how much homework they did prior to the interview. Candidates who “blank” on this question may be unfamiliar with your company and the finance industry as a whole, and applying to this role on a whim. You don’t want an employee who lacks the ability or desire to research.

These are crucial questions to ask. Many candidates have not thought through the impact that working in a church or ministry will have on their professional and personal lives or how it may affect their families.

What you’re looking for when a candidate answers this question is whether he or she has the right kinds of experience for your church’s or nonprofit’s needs. You’ll be able to match candidates’ responses against a checklist or assessment of what you need your CFO or COO to manage and accomplish.

One of my favorite leaders used to say there are facts, and there are true facts. If you have two or more reporting systems, you will spend unproductive time reconciling differences and untangling conflicting definitions. I’ve seen one company with four different definitions of revenue: non-GAAP revenue before credits, non-GAAP revenue net of credits, revenue for calculating sales compensation, and GAAP revenue. You need a single source of truth.

I like this question because it shows how much thought the candidate has put into my business. It also shows where they would like to take the company in an executive role. The thoughtfulness of this answer is more important than the answer’s content.

☛ Tell me about a time when you faced conflict with stakeholders. How did you resolve it?

☛ Recall a time you showed excellent leadership in managing your department

☛ Describe your most important contribution to your current/previous company

Accounting concepts are those basis assumptions upon which basic process of accounting is based. Following are the basic accounting concepts:

1) Business Entity Concept

2) Dual Aspect Concept

3) Going Concern Concept

4) Accounting Period

5) Concept Cost Concept

6) Money Measurement Concept

7) Matching Concept

Deciding the financial needs

☛ Raising the funds required

☛ Allocation of funds

☛ Fixed assets management

☛ Working capital management

☛ Allocation of Income

☛ Control of Funds

☛ Evaluation of Performance

☛ Corporate Taxation

Capitalization is a collection of share capital, loans, reserves and debentures. It represents permanent investment in companies and it also removes the need of long-term loan plans. It is used to show the reality of the industry by promoting competition, development, profit and investment between individuals, companies and businesses. Balance capitalization is part of this Capitalization only where it is compared to the relative importance, value and other things to make it proportionate in every sense. In balance capitalization debits and credits should be equal on both sides and the share should be shared among all in equal proportions.

Get to the bottom of why this candidate truly deserves your attention. It could be their previous experience in a related role, achievements within the industry, or even their unique personality. This question is also important for testing your candidate’s level of confidence — is it too much or just right?

Management Accounting is the process of analysis, interpretation and presentation of accounting information collected with the help of financial accounting and cost accounting, in order to assist management in the process of decision making, creation of policy and day to day operation of an organization. Thus, it is clear from the above that the management accounting is based on financial accounting and cost accounting.

Candidates without specific examples often do not seem credible. However, the example shared should be fairly inconsequential, unintentional, and a learned lesson should be gleaned from it. Moving ahead without group assistance while assigned to a group project meant to be collaborative is a good example.

Excel is a brilliant invention, versatile and easy to use. It’s also hard for groups of people to use together, easy to make mistakes, hard to find mistakes and insecure. The best way to use Excel is for rapid prototyping of anything new. Once the process is stable for three months, it’s time to move to a collaborative, automated, secure enterprise system and off Excel.

And what would that professor say about you? These two questions will allow you to dig deeper into the potential weaknesses and challenges of your entry-level candidates. Since they might not have previous work experience, this is a great question to see how they handle situations they don’t enjoy. While they may have hated their creative writing class, would their professor say they put their best foot forward in spite of it all?

This system records only cash receipts and payments. This system assumes that there are no credit transactions. In this system of accounting, expenses are considered only when they are paid and incomes are considered when they are actually received. This system is used by the organizations which are established for non profit purpose. But this system is considered to be defective in nature as it does not show the actual profits earned and the current state of affairs of the organization.

According to this concept, the indefinite period of time is divided into shorter time periods, each one being in the form of Accounting period, in order to facilitate the preparation of financial statements on periodical basis. Selection of accounting period depends on characteristics like business organization, statutory requirements etc.

Think carefully before you answer, because the object of this question is to explore whether you are capable of communication information and whether you have the ability to communicate in a way that will gain the acceptance and agreement you are seeking.