The Role of the Financial Manager

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ROLE OF THE FINANCIAL MANAGER

The financial manager has an important role to play in the company. He is responsible for financial planning, ensuring that the accounts are recorded and maintained in accordance to the GAAP. He is directly responsible for the budgeting, controlling, and debt financing functions.
He plays an important role in the financial audits. Controls the financial functions in foreign branches, plays the key role in ensuring compliance with different laws relating to finance and accounts, plays an important role in policy formation, and development of plans. The financial manager recruits, sets up the organizational structure, and places various personnel in the finance and accounting department. He plays a key role with other departments in developing their short and long term plan. Whenever, there is an investment decision he plaROLE OF THE FINANCIAL MANAGER

The financial manager has an important role to play in the company. He is responsible for financial planning, ensuring that the accounts are recorded and maintained in accordance to the GAAP. He is directly responsible for the budgeting, controlling, and debt financing functions.
He plays an important role in the financial audits. Controls the financial functions in foreign branches, plays the key role in ensuring compliance with different laws relating to finance and accounts, plays an important role in policy formation, and development of plans. The financial manager recruits, sets up the organizational structure, and places various personnel in the finance and accounting department. He plays a key role with other departments in developing their short and long term plan. Whenever, there is an investment decision he plays an important decision making role. He plays a key role in the preparation of financial accounts, financial reports, and forecasts. His role is very important in the day to day functioning of the finance department, the servicing of debt, and in the preparation of the final accounts. Most importantly, he keeps vigilance on financial performance and monitors actual performance with the budget.

With the important roles played by the chief financial officer, it is apparent that if the CFO becomes the CEO of the company, he would be able to provide a balanced and able leadership to the company. In this context, it is important to understand the chief financial officer should develop strong communication skills, should be able to understand and manage managers, and have a deep understanding of the company's product, marketing, operations and personnel. He should be able to communicate a deep vision. From this perspective, if a company is seeking to groom a CFO for the position of a CEO they should ensure that the CFO develops leadership skills. This they can easily do by developing mentors for the CFO, who can improve the leadership skills of the CFO. If the mentoring is successful and the CFO develops skills such as communications and entrepreneurship, the transition from the role of a CFO to CEO will be relatively easier.

References:

www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-cfo.htm www.sideroad.com/Management/role-of-cfo.html www.b2bcfo.com/part-time-cfo/frequently-asked-questions/ www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/ID/cafo/ID-350.pdf ...