Becoming a certified management accountant requires becoming a certified public accountant, which requires a four-year bachelor’s degree or higher and a three-year master’s degree or higher. Many states require at least a bachelor’s degree, and some require a master’s degree. Some states require only that individuals have a minimum amount of experience working in accounting or a minimum amount of education. Most states do not require any experience, although most states will require some training in business and financial management before a person can become certified as a CMA. The CMA can sit for the Certified Management Accountant exam.
There are several different types of CMA designation that you may become associated with. There is the Certified Management Accountant designation that is granted by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. They do not give out this designation for free and they will only accept those candidates that have earned the majority of their education in accountancy and have at least 5 years of experience as a Certified Management Accountant. Another type of designation is the Certified Fraud Examiner designation. This is for people who want to be fraud investigators and they must have a three year degree in accounting or higher.
You can also get the Certified Management Accountant credential through an institution or a program that is run by the United States Department of Education. They offer the CMA designation as a credit towards their corporate finance MBA. They have several requirements that are met in order to earn this credit. First, they must earn a minimum of seventy hours of coursework from accredited schools that focus on accounting and must be passed three credit hours from an accredited university.
Then there is the Certified Management Accountant or CMA designation and the Registered Retirement Attendant designation. The CMA receives higher median total compensation than the RTA. Certified Management Accountant or CMA’s make about twenty thousand dollars a year. The average salaries for Certified Management Accountant’s are between eighteen and twenty-eight thousand dollars a year. The best paying Certified Management Accountant jobs are with firms that provide corporate finance, insurance, investment banking, franchising, insurance, financial planning and consulting services.
The higher median total compensation means that the job satisfaction for a Certified Management Accountant is much higher than any other Certified Management Accountant job. If you are looking for a CMA, the first place that should come to mind is the larger firms with the highest base salary. Some of these firms include CitiBank, Fleet Bank, PNC Bank and Capital One. You will find that each of these companies pay more than fifty thousand dollars a year for certified management accountants. Base salary is based on the experience of the employee and will vary between firms.
There are also some survey companies out there that do a paid survey for those wanting to know if they would earn more money in the Certified Management Accountant designation if they took a survey for the non-cmas designation. These types of surveys are usually thirty minutes or one hour long. The survey takers make between forty and sixty dollars for each survey. The reason that there is a paid survey for Certified Management Accountant certification is that the majority of people working in the field prefer the non-certification status over the certificate.
When looking at your career options, be sure that you take a good look at what Certified Management Accountant means when someone is asked what it means to them. Those who really want to move across to the new Certified Management Accountant designation should consider a paid survey. Not only can they earn a nice little extra income, but they will be making an important and valuable point of their career. Knowing what Certified Management Accountant means to those that are willing to take the time to understand their higher median total compensation means that those candidates that really want to move across into the CMA designation will be able to move across.