Describe a Time When You Helped to Reduce Costs at a Previous Accountant Job

 

woman is working with a lot of papers. She looks confused. “Cost Accounting” forms a separate job field in some countries. Companies employ people who collect, analyze, summarize and evaluate various alternative courses of action the managers can take, in order to minimize the expenses and maximize the savings.

However, each good accountant should give some advice about cost reduction, without suggesting a change to the production or distribution processes in the company.

Note: This particular question appears mostly in interviews for intermediate and senior accounting roles, or for cost accountant position. If you apply for an entry level job, you can skip this one.

The most common way of cost reduction consists in managing the purchases in time, trying to benefit from various methods of depreciation in relation to the profit or loss of the current and past fiscal years.

Obviously there are more advance methods of cost reduction, and we elaborate on them in our interview guide.

Sample answer

I used operation analysis in my last job. I had an access to the budgets and could see how the company spent money. I identified several transactions that were not tax deductible, but could be replaced with transactions that were equal and tax deductible. I presented the idea in a managerial meeting, they agreed to my proposal, and we managed to reduce tax expenses by four percent. I consider it a great achievement.

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