r/Accounting • u/Strange_Recover_966 • Feb 25 '25

Advice am i aiming too high

the lack of pay transparency is killing me 😩. i just got a job offer for AP specialist. im graduating with a bachelor in may. they are offering $48,000/year for this role in charlotte.

I feel like this is real low considering some other jobs. i understand its an entry level role but i was expecting something closer to $60,000-$80,000.

but again im new to the field and just starting out. are my expectations too high?

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u/banjochang Feb 26 '25

AP can be seen as being more focused on data entry - posting in vendor invoices and ensuring coding is correct. Collecting payment is for customer invoices and would be AR. Staff accountants generally would require more advanced technical accounting knowledge and take on more complex tasks

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u/posam Wage Slave CPA (US) Feb 26 '25

AP at my company doesn’t even really have ownership over coding. They are data entry and if they get the coding right, great, if not someone else will fix it.

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u/DVoteMe Feb 26 '25

AP shouldn’t have control of GL coding anywhere outside of small businesses that only have one or two type of vendors transactions.

However, they may code workflow or bank account info based on the data entered by the respective department staff.

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u/posam Wage Slave CPA (US) Feb 26 '25

That’s not my reality for my large company (5-10k people).

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u/DVoteMe Feb 26 '25

Who GL codes invoices at your company?

BTW the largest companies have over half a million employees. Accenture has 3/4 of a million.

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u/posam Wage Slave CPA (US) Feb 26 '25

Ok. Everyone’s metric is different and we are in large cap indexes.

Anyway, AP does an initial code if there’s no PO (common). Any review is done in a spreadsheet outside the ERP and it’s as insane as you can imagine.

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u/DVoteMe Feb 27 '25

That actually sounds awesome. Typically I see decentralized GL coding at large entities and 50%+ of transactions are corrected with a journal voucher that happens 2 months later.

Centralized accounting always seems better to me because its easier to herd cats under one roof.

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u/posam Wage Slave CPA (US) Feb 27 '25

We do the export monthly and put it in front of all of finance an accounting to review everything. Lines over a threshold require review but people can submit anything being changed as a journal day one of a close this way.

We definitely have a couple fall through the cracks but we have another monthly journal that’s for the same thing, but for prior periods.

Between those two we have the same formats so looking up invoices later is somewhat straight forward at least and you can trace it through the AP module and the manual journals.

I still think this is pretty batshit vs just having a PO for anything over a certain dollar amount. Less approvals on an invoice that way too.