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About strategic management
The importance of managerial accounting to a management
Applying accounting concepts and principles
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Introduction:
The basic objective of accounting is to provide information that is useful in making business and economic decisions. What makes accounting information useful for decision-making? The answer is however the accounting information confirms to the qualities that should be possessed by the financial and cost & Managerial reporting. In view and addition to this, the importance of strategic cost management and costing techniques like Activity based costing should not be underestimated. This implies that organization should be installing appropriate framework of strategic cost management to reduce its costs in key areas on which the success of organization is heavily dependent.
Objective of the study:
The Project is presented with the following objectives:
1. To understand the various interfaces between financial accounting and Cost & management accounting
2. To understand the concept & significance of Strategic Management Programme.
3. To understand the basic idea and concepts of managerial accounting.
Main branches of accounting:
○ Financial Accounting
Financial accounting is relating to record all financial activity. These activities are related to business. Because of area of business is increasing day by day so the area of financial accounting is also increasing. Every day a new type of business is started. So daily accountant invents a new journal entry. Accountant will take the help of financial accounting with new thinking of result. So a new chapter of financial accounting is included by us.
○ Cost Accounting
If you want to increase your profit, then start to decrease your cost. What a dialogue, this is not a dialogue but this is the reality of today business. Every day an accountant invents new method of decreasing the cost. All method of calculation of FIFO, LIFO, standard costing, variance calculation and making of cost budget is not the end of cost accounting but this is the starting of cost accounting. Internet cost reduction method is also a new mile stone in this direction.
○ Management Accounting
One new manager will do work in the field of management accounting. He will utilize accounting information in new way. This is the real definition of management accounting. How to use accounting data and accounting education in the field of management so that we will carry our business at international level. Ratio analysis , fund flow statements, cash flow statements , working capital management , capital budgeting , cost of capital calculation is just starting in this point.
Differences between Financial and Cost & management Accounting:
The differences between Financial and Cost & management accounting are discussed below under respective heads:
Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that is usually used as a supplement to a company’s usual costing system, and is therefore used for internal decision-making. It is designed to inform managers of costing information for decisions (strategic and others) that potentially affect capacity and consequently “fixed” as well as variable costs. In addition, ABC can also be used to pinpoint activities that would benefit from process improvements.
Management accounting in organisation is very important for decision-making and to make the business more efficient and therefore increasing its profits. Is the process of preparing accounts that can help managers to make day-to-day and short-term decisions, by providing them with accurate and timely key financial and statistical information...
The functions of managerial accounting include planning, decision-making, controlling, and evaluation. To make good decisions, managers must constantly adapt to technological changes, changes in the organization's needs, and new approaches to other functional areas of business-- marketing, production, finance, organizational behavior, and corporate strategy. Planning is the setting of goals and developing strategies and tactics to achieve them. Controlling is concerned with achieving the goals and evaluating performance. The success of an organization lies heavily on the shoulders of those making these decisions.
Financial accounting focuses on providing financial statements to stockholders and internal and external users. Financial statements created under managerial accounting provide instructions and data used for internal business management purposes in effort to compute cost of product. Financial accounting provides data for the sole purpose of preparing companies financial statements. Unlike financial accounting, managerial accounting uses past records to forecast future budgets; additionally it doesn’t adhere to any set financial accounting standards such as US GAAP or IFRS (Averkamp). Financial accounting creates financial income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements under the guidelines of US GAAP or IFRS; however managerial accounting prepares in-depth management products to include cost volume profit analysis, profit planning, operational budgeting, capital budgeting to name a few
This, in order to identify what are the true costs of each customer and each order, enables the company to fully understand its cost structure thereby providing the base for better business choices and higher profitability. These are very sensible goals indeed. Even though the company is profitable, implementing a new, activity-based cost accounting system will allow the company to improve its margins and become even more focused and competitive in the future. 2.2. What is the difference between a.... ...
Managerial Accounting addresses those aspects that relates to an individual organization return on investments (ROI). (Albrecht, Stice, Stice, & Skousen, 2002) A company’s profitability depends on periodic attention to its assets turnover and profit margin. This process is designed to support the decision making that adds value to an organization. Organizations are sometimes broad and divisional. Planning, controlling, and evaluating is key in the effective decision making process. (Albrecht, Stice, Stice, & Skousen, 2002) An organization must make decisions about its future products, services, operations, and investments. It must begin a tracking process for cost, quality, and performance. Finally it must analyze the results, and variances, providing feedback to assess areas of personnel, divisions, products, and processes. (Albrecht, Stice, Stice, & Skousen, 2002)
The contained paper has been prepared with objectives of elaborating over the three different costing methods namely, Absorption/Full Costing, Variable/Marginal Costing, and Activity Based accounting. The first segment of the report seeks to define and illustrate the costing methods based on the personal understanding of the writer gained through the class room and the academic readings. Part two of the report takes a form of short essay, written critically to evaluate the application of standard costing and variance analysis to any size of business, and concludes with a verdict that whether or not standard costing and variance analysis is applicable to each business with consideration of its costs and benefits of the system.
Regarding form, management accounting does not provide for any standard format of preparing management accounts.It follows any size as long as the information is well presented to internal users and management of an organization to enhance decision-making. On the other hand financial accounting prescribes a composition for preparing published financial statements and accounts following a standard size as guided by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAPs) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).In financial accounting, there are concepts which accountants must adhere to in preparing financial statements.The accountants are guided by uniform concepts and standards of reporting which is not the case in managerial
The overall purpose of cost accounting is to advise top administration and the management team on the most suitable and cost effective methods and actions to employ based on cost, capability and efficiencies of a given product or service. It can be defined as the method where all the expenditures used during execution of business activities are gathered, categorized, examined and noted down (Horngren & Srikant, 2000). Once these numbers are gathered and recorded the information is used to determine a selling price and/or to identify possible investment opportunities. Although the principal aim or function of cost accounting is to help the business administration with their decision making and business planning process, the cost accounting data
Cost Accounting: Its role and ethical considerations Introduction: Accounting is the process of identifying, measuring, and communicating economic information about an entity for the purpose of making decisions and informed judgements. The major areas of within the accounting are: Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting/Cost Accounting and Auditing- Public Accounting Managerial accounting is concerned with the use of economic and financial information to plan and control the activities of an entity and to support the management in planning and decision-making process. Cost accounting is the subset of managerial accounting and it helps management in determination and accumulation of product, process or service cost. Role of Cost Accounting: Increased competition and uncertain business conditions have put significant pressure on corporate management to make informed business decisions and maximize their company?s financial performance. In response to this pressure, a range of management accounting tools and techniques has emerged.
Subsequent to obtaining the accounting information, managerial accountants will then proceed to use it to plan, evaluate the company performance and also control the business operations. With regards to planning, the managers are required to make decisions concerning the kind of product to introduce into the market, when to introduce the product and where the production should take place. In performance evaluation, individual product lin...
Managerial accounting has changed over the years. Managerial accounting focuses on more than the financial aspect. We will be looking at how managerial accounting affects the business world today. Businesses also look to the economy, federal taxes, and the financial market so they can make the best decisions for their business. Management accountants use their skills to help with decisions that help a business make good decisions so their company will be valuable and in an ethical manner.
Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that is designed to provide managers with cost information for strategic and other decisions that potentially affect capacity and therefore “fixed” as well as variable costs. Activity-based costing is mostly used for internal decision making and managing activities while traditional costing method is used to provide data for external financial reports. Most organization uses activity-based costing as an addition system for using traditional absorption costing as sometimes the traditional cost system misleads the product’s profitability. In a company, there are many products on sale, if one product is sold at a high price with low product margin and a product with high product margin at a low price, it may result in a loss. In addition, due to the reason that cost drivers and enterprises business may change, activity-based costing analysis also needs to be revised periodically. This amendment should be prompted to change pricing, product, customer focus and market share strategy to improve corporate profitability.
Management accounting helps improves companies supply chain by using the Activity- Based Costing (ABC). It helps improves business process by determining non- valued added activities and improve better the allocation of resource in an efficient and effective manner. With a better company resources allocation, it helps company identifies wasteful products .Through ABC analysis, company had a better understanding of the utilities of overhead and helps company prevent any wasteful product and unnecessary costs. The method also helps to fix price of products or sevices that are excessive or
In management accounting, cost management has a crucial role and finds its foundations in understanding “cost behaviour”. “Cost behaviour analysis” can be defined as “the study of how cost changes when there is a change in an organisation’s level of activity”. (Definition https://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/what-is-cost-behavior).