April 2015 Newsletter for Accounting & Finance Professionals in Houston by Diane Delgado LeMaire @ CFS

April 2015

Industry News and Updates
First things first. Please make sure that you have added my new email address to your contacts. It is dlemaire@cfstaffing.com.

With Q1 behind us lets jump right into the update for Houston. I am sure everyone is curious about the oil & gas prices and what impact they are having  on the job market in Houston. I have been in the recruiting industry for almost 14 years and have already been through 2 full blown recessions. 2015 has been an interesting year so far.  I feel like our local economy has taken a hit from the drop of Oil & Gas, but it’s not as severe (knock on wood) as I thought it would be. Some might beg to differ but, let me explain!

Obviously, Houston has been impacted by the depressed prices. Most Exploration & Production companies are not hiring at all. Some are even laying off, but downstream and midstream companies are still hiring. They are actually benefiting from the drop in price. Not to mention the back log of construction projects that are still on the books. We are also seeing increased demand from consumer products based companies (retail, restaurant, healthcare). Houston has gained nearly 570,000 residents in the past 5 years!

Just imagine the resources they will need from housing, healthcare to groceries and cars!

So, is the job market as good as it was last year? The simple answer is no, but there are still a lot of opportunities out there in several other industries outside of “oil & gas”.

Until next time..

Local Statistics:

  • National / Houston Unemployment rate:8/4.3
  • Price of Oil:$56.71(last year $100)
  • Oil Rig Count:1109 (last year 1803)
  • Industries hiring:Manufacturing, Construction, Consumer Products related companies, Real Estate & Homebuilding, Healthcare
  • Positions in demand:Controller, Financial Analyst, Tax, Internal Auditor, Payroll,

Local Searches

NEW!!!!!

– Property Accountant – Staff or Senior

– Treasury Analyst – Heavy Cash Management

– Treasury Analyst – Must speak Spanish

– Treasury Accountant – Must speak Spanish

– Controller – WIP / POC a MUST

– Full Time – Consultant – Transactions Advisory Services – All Levels!!!!

– Full Time – Consultant – Financial Advisory Services – All Levels!!!!!

– Hyperion Financial Analyst – HFM, Hyperion or Smartview experience – 1 to 2 years of experience!!!!

– Staff Accountant – work under 3 amazing controllers and learn from the best!!!!! no more than 2 years of experience needed.

– Internal Audit Manager – Pre-IPO company!

– Sales & Use Tax Accountant – staff and senior

– Payroll Manager MUST have Canadian payroll experience

– Financial Planning and Analysis Manager – HEAVY acquisition based

– AP Manager – SAP experience!!!!!

Still Looking For:

– Controller with domestic & international accounting experience (SEC too!)

– Controller, CPA with SEC

– AP Manager – bringing AP in house!

– Senior Accountant – Corporate accounting

– Director with International and Federal Tax experience – Partnership too

– Senior Auditor (less than 10% travel)

– Operational Auditor – 50% travel

– AP Supervisor – small company, family atmosphere

– Senior Accountant – Oil & Gas – Right hand person to the Controller

– Tax Analyst – Federal & State – Amazing tenure in this group!

– CFO – San Antonio – retail background preferred

– Budget Analyst – banner experience preferred

– Billing Clerk

– AP Clerk MUST speak French

News and Resources

Oil & Gas Services – Senior Accountant – NW Houston Location – EMAIL: dcd@fittsroberts.com

Our client is a publicly traded oil & gas services company with over 3000 employees worldwide. They are growing through acquisition and organic growth. At this time they need to add a Division Senior Accountant to their team.

• Work directly with the Accounting Manager in completing essential accounting/finance functions of the company.

Month-end financial reporting
Assist in month-end closing procedures including:
o General Journal entries on multiple general ledgers
o General Ledger account reconciliations
o Intercompany invoices
o Fixed Asset management including additions, disposals, and depreciation
o Bank reconciliations
o Account roll-forwards and sub-ledger reconciliations
o Assistance in other aspects of closing of the books and records in accordance with US GAAP
o Maintain compliance of internal SOX controls

• Assist in maintaining accounting controls
• Assist with intercompany invoicing

Minimum Qualifications
• Required Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting
• Advanced skills required in MS Excel and Word.
• Good interpersonal and leadership skills to gather information from and work with multiple levels the organization.

Corporate Accounting Manager – Galleria – EMAIL: dcd@fittsroberts.com

The corporate accounting manager will effectively manage all general accounting activities for multiple corporate controlled entities under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).  The Corporate Accounting Manager is responsible for managing the month-end close process and supervising the corporate accounting staff to ensure timely and accurate financial reporting and analysis.  The position will report to the Assistant Controller and be called on to interact with executive management as needed.

Primary Responsibilities:

  • Maintain policies, procedures and internal controls required to ensure financial statements of corporate companies are prepared timely and in accordance with GAAP.
  • Maintain procedures to ensure expenditures made by corporate departments are identified and properly accrued each month
  • Ensure compliance with internal controls
  • Complete monthly variance analysis of financial statements for all corporate companies
  • Complete monthly departmental analysis reports comparing actual to budget and prior year actuals
  • Supervise month-end close and financial statement preparation process
  • Supervision of accounts payable
  • Evaluate processes and procedures for improvement and develop recommendations for improvements
  • Ensure timely reconciliations to supporting ledgers or documentation of all GL account balances
  • Ensure all bank account balances are properly reconciled on a monthly basis
  • Ensure information required for entries to be made by subsidiaries is accurate and is provided timely
  • Identify profit improvement or cost reduction opportunities at corporate
  • Respond to inquiries made by independent auditors and or Business Compliance department
  • Provide team assessments to executive management
  • Develop relationships with all corporate departments and be responsive to their needs
  • Supervise and review reconciliations for multiple subsidiary accounts to ensure accurate reporting of consolidated financials
  • Manage annual budgeting process for corporate departments and corporate companies

Requirements

  • Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting; CPA or CPA candidate preferred
  • 5+ years experience, including audit, supervisory and management experience
  • Strong understanding & ability to interpret and apply GAAP
  • Hyperion experience a plus
  • Public company experience a plus
  • Strong verbal communication skills
  • Ability to maintain productive working relationships with other employees outside of the department
  • Ability to exercise initiative and sound judgment
  • Consolidation experience a plus
  • Strong skills in use of complex Excel spreadsheets

Diane Delgado LeMaire| Area Director, Executive Search & Branch Manager | Creative Financial Staffing, a division of Fitts, Roberts CPA Firm | 5718 Westheimer Suite 800 | Houston, TX 77057 | 713-490-6003 | dcd@fittsroberts.com|

Intercompany Accountant – Oil and Gas – Beltway and 290 – to 70K EMAIL: dcd@fittsroberts.com

Intercompany (IC) Position Duties

1. Reconcile monthly IC/GIS activity against Oracle Local GL and Consolidated GL monthly activity to make sure they all match each other in USD. Contact appropriate personnel about variances that need to be corrected by Preliminary close each month.
2. Review and compare IC sub-ledgers in Excel to Unsettled Reports in GIS for accuracy and matching each other.
3. Help prepare IC invoices & backup (creating & printing relating to netting IC AR & IC AP and clearing old IC balances (acct. 120004).
4. Help from time to time to enter IC invoices into GIS in time crunch.
5. Prepare IC JE entries each month and review & post IC JE entries in Oracle GL.
6. Run queries on IC/GIS account activity.
7. For local audits confirm that year end IC balances kept locally agree or disagree with balances (IC sub-ledgers) kept by Corporate IC/GIS dept.
8. Oversee that the yearly revaluation of IC balance sheet account balances is done only on companies where it is allowed by local statutory laws & entity does not do monthly revaluations of IC accounts already.
9. Respond to inquiries from various personnel across the world about what makes up IC balances (detail), issues with accessing Oracle GIS, need training manuals & examples for entering IC invoices into Oracle GIS, needing copies of entered IC invoices & support backup, and IC invoice templates for various IC transactions types in a timely manner.
10. Reconcile Oracle Local to Statutory Local for IC balance sheet accounts by obtaining detail data from field offices to be able to compare IC invoice by IC invoice between Oracle Local/GIS and Statutory Local. Document which IC invoices are causing the problem and note why the IC invoice(s) were not allowed in Statutory Local books. (Preferably before an entity is converted to Oracle as the main accounting system for them).

Qualifications:
• Bachelor degree in Accounting, CPA preferred but not required
• 3-5 years of experience
The person should be knowledgeable of US GAAP and advanced Excel skills would be preferred. The person should have a working knowledge of Oracle 11i (IC, GL, AR, & AP), ADI (Oracle), and Discoverer (Oracle) software, although not essential. Knowledge of Monarch software would be beneficial but not required.