Personal dimension

Some people become physicists out of love for numbers,
others become accountants

Lyubov SHIRYAEVA was born in the city of Dubna, graduated with honors from the Dubna State University with a degree in Economics. "Scientific interest in this area has not left me to this day," she says about herself. "I have lived in Dubna for 21 years and decided to leave for the capital. Life in Moscow began with work in one of the most romantic spheres of all - aviation. Having flown around many countries as a flight attendant, I realized that the earth attracts me more than the sky and the final decision was made - to work in my profession!" For almost three years, Lyubov has been working as a senior accountant at JINR and today, on the pages of our newspaper she is talking about her responsibilities, plans and staff.

I mastered the accounting profession at the famous company "Philips" that gave me the opportunity to learn many of the nuances of work in practice. However, the feeling that I was "out of place" did not leave me.

Since I love Dubna very much and dreamed of returning to our wonderful science city, I decided to find out about a suitable job at the Institute, because it is one of the city-forming enterprises and is related to scientific activities that I also continued to engage in (although not core for JINR) at throughout the entire time. Fortunately, today, I am a staff member of a department in which I can demonstrate my skills and abilities for the benefit of the Institute.

My immediate goal is to obtain a PhD in Economics. For several years now, I have been widely working on dissertation research in the professional area that arouses my greatest interest. In the future, I want to continue my development in the organization with which I am going to unite my life - JINR!

I think that many people find the work of accountants routine, boring and unimportant and sometimes consider representatives of our profession to be rather boring people that find fault with everything and daily pursue one goal - to send visitors to deal with their problems on their own in order to calmly go on with their paperwork. However, this is far from the case! If you have ever had similar thoughts about our profession, keep reading, I think you will change your mind.

Based on experience, I would like to note that in the work of JINR accountants, a responsible approach to their work and coherence are certainly important, since we play one of the key roles in the financial activities of the Institute. At the same time, one of the defining requirements for accounting specialists is to be extremely polite and tolerant towards visitors.

The work of an accountant does not tolerate inattention and lack of a clear structure, because we deal with quite frequently changing realities in the field of legislation, tax law and various types of reporting. Of course, an accountant must have knowledge of accounting systems, building a balance sheet, accounting registers and other nuances.

Among other things, an accountant needs to have logical and systematic thinking, because every day we are required to work in multitasking mode, since, in addition to our daily duties, we are often faced with issues that require operational analysis and making the optimal decision to continue certain work as in ours and in other departments of the Institute.

Due to the scale of the Institute, not only in terms of the number of employees, but also in the areas of its activities, every day, we work with a large volume of tasks and various types of information. To optimize and coordinate the processes carried out, the accounting department of the Institute consists of six groups specializing in individual functions, namely: the financial operations group (that includes the well-known cash desk, specialists in advance reports and this group also carries out work and control over all bank payments of the Institute); group of tax control, reporting and accounting methodology (engaged in interaction with the tax service, the unified social fund of the Russian Federation and other federal services); payroll group; group for settlements with suppliers, contractors and other organizations (they carry out reconciliations of the Institute's financial payments with suppliers of goods and services and other procedures); the research and consolidated balance sheet group (as the name implies, these specialists are involved in preparing and drawing up balance sheets, closing accounting records and generating reports) and the group for accounting for fixed assets, intangible assets and inventories, of which I am an employee.

And of course, the management staff plays a major role in coordinating and monitoring the work of the JINR accounting department: the Institute's chief accountant and his three deputies.

Each office in our building contains the name of the group and a list of specialists working in it. In case of difficulties in resolving any issue, one can contact the secretary of the chief accountant that will tell you which of our colleagues will help to solve this or that problem.

The working day starts steadily - at 8:45 AM we are already at our workplace. Control of primary documentation, processing and payment of invoices, accounting, reconciliation of calculations - everyday life for accountants. Each of these operations requires knowledge of current legal requirements in the areas of accounting and tax accounting, extreme concentration and of course, responsibility.

My responsibilities, in particular, include maintaining records of the Institute's fixed assets, inventories (namely: their registration, write-off, movements within the Institute, accounting for modernization and others) and other material assets, including precious metals, nuclear materials, stable isotopes and radioactive substances.

During the period I have worked at the Institute, I have already succeeded to carry out effective work on correctly organizing the accounting process for nuclear materials that was estimated at a fairly high level as part of an audit by Rosatom. I think it is worth noting the support and assistance provided to me in this by my colleagues and the management of the Institute's accounting department, as well as AYSS.

The next task is to improve the JINR accounting system for precious metals and precious stones for the timely and of course, correct reflection of data on them in the State Integrated Information System in the field of control over their circulation on the territory of our country that at the legislative level is obliged to maintain by every organization that deals with gold, silver, palladium and other precious metals in any shape or condition.

Every year, in accordance with the orders of JINR Director, an inventory is carried out, in the organization and implementation of which our group takes an active part, preparing the required documents and visiting all laboratories and departments to reconcile accounting data with the actual availability of fixed assets and other material assets of the Institute. Thanks to it, we not only work with documentation throughout the year, but also personally cooperate with both financially responsible persons and other JINR employees regarding the correctness of accounting of property owned by the Institute.

The Institute's accounting system is not static. We also keep up with the times, taking part in the work to automate our processes, including converting them into digital format. For example, today, on the Digital JINR website in the "Administrative Services" section on the "Finance and Documents" tab, you can familiarize yourself with the rules for preparing certain documents, as well as find payment instructions, orders, correspondence, document flow regulations and much more. In the "Other Services - Forms" section you can quickly download templates for all necessary documents. Also, on the site there is the opportunity to sign up for the submission of an advance report, order the necessary certificates and many other opportunities that reduce the time spent on one or another action (to come, to find, to find out, to draw up, to fill out, to receive, etc.) as required operations and in general, significantly simplify the cooperation of the accounting department with each of the Institute's employees.

At the same time, in the immediate plans of the JINR Accounting Department is to carry out organizational and structural changes related to meeting the issues of centralizing the accounting service of the Institute, including accounting and control of the activities and financial results of self-supporting service units (CPED, HRCMO, SIMO, ACS, MTS and the Resort Hotel "Dubna").

Some people go into physics for the love of numbers and others go into accounting! Any business transaction, including business trips, events, purchases, sales and other events that involve finance, is impossible without the participation of accounting. And our work at the Institute, in turn, would not be so interesting without the people that create history in the world of science!