Production Accountants

BetaGamma · 11-12-2009, 08:48 AM

Hi all,
I'm a fairly recent grad who has a B. Comm, majoring in Accounting. I'm currently working for a visual effects company and through a series of events I've ended up as the head production accountant (crazy I know, but I'm doing a good job!). I handle the maintenance of all our show's budgets and constantly work with the producers using them.

I ultimately would like to end up in the gaming industry in a similar role on the production end of things, and maybe if the stars align, move up the production ladder. I was originally going to pursue an accounting designation, but I don't find straight-up financial accounting to be terribly interesting (I guess you could say I'd prefer to work on the creative end of things, utilizing my business education) so I have two questions:

1 - Is there a call for production accountants in the gaming industry?

2 - Is there a particular designation that is desirable for a production accountant to have (e.g. CGA, CMA, CA or something else)?

Thank you!

tsloper · 11-12-2009, 09:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BetaGamma

1 - Is there a call for production accountants in the gaming industry?
2 - Is there a particular designation that is desirable for a production accountant to have (e.g. CGA, CMA, CA or something else)?

1. Accountants and bookkeepers, yes. But what is a "production accountant"? Never heard of the term. Is that like a comptroller?
2. No idea. It would depend on the company.

BetaGamma · 11-12-2009, 09:36 AM

No, it's not nearly as involved as a Controller. As a production accountant, my job is to maintain the information in the budgets for the shows we are working on. For example, I do weekly updates ensuring that all expenses (labour, hardware, software, etc.) are accounted for in the budgets so that the producers can see if they are over or under budget on a project.

I wasn't really familiar with this particular position when I started either, so I'm not sure how common it is; but I would assume that an organization would need someone to maintain this sort of information, so maybe there is a different name for this role?

tsloper · 11-12-2009, 09:52 AM

The game producer usually does that himself, or has the assistant producer or associate producer do it, or gets an Oracle report. But as I said before, yes, you can work your way into production from a finance/accounting job at a game company that has a production department. See the egg diagram in my article at http://www.sloperama.com/advice/lesson41.htm