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Differences and similarities between financial and managerial accounting
The importance of managerial accounting
Differences and similarities between financial and managerial accounting
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ACCOUNTING – UNIT 3
Explain the difference between financial and management accounting, the fundamentals of management accounting. Explain how costs are classified using examples.
Accounting is a systematic process or work that identifies, records, reports and analyses financial transactions and information of a business. It allows a company to analyse the financial performance of a business and reveals profit or loss for a certain period of time and the value of assets, liabilities and owners’ equity. Thus, its purpose is to provide information needed for decision making. However, there are two types of accounting. In this essay I am going to explain the differences between financial and management accounting including what fundamentals of accounting management are as well as the classification of various costs in accounting.
Financial accounting is specialised to track a company’s financial transactions which are recorded, summarised and presented in a financial report or statements such as balance sheets, income statements, statements of cash flows and statements of owner’s equity. These statements are annual basis and considered external as they are given to people or stakeholders outside of a company. The audience of financial accounting reports are stakeholders or owners, lenders, board of directors and financial institutions, which are known as the primary recipients. Financial accounting enables them to see how the company has performed in the past. Once a company’s stock is publicly traded, its financial statements will be spread and the information will reach secondary recipients. They are competitors, employees, labour organisations, customers and investment analysts.
The purpose of financial accounting is to provide e...
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...f product. Examples of this type of costs are wood, electricity for factory, production workers wages, and so on. The indirect cost is the cost that cannot be easily and conveniently traced to a unit of product. This includes manufacturing overhead, rent, admin staff wages and so on.
According to the behaviour, costs classify as fixed and variable. Fixed costs are the ones which remain constant or unaffected within a certain level of output or sales. Examples of fixed costs are rent, insurance, depreciation of building, managers’ salary etc., which remain constant even though a large number of units are produced. On the other hand, variable costs vary in direct proportion to the output. It can increase or decrease based on the production unit. Examples of variable cost are electricity for factory, materials used to manufacture a product, wages of workers and so on.
Variable costs, for a manufacturing company, are those costs that increase or decrease as production increases or decreases. If production increases, then variable costs will increase; if production decreases, variable costs will decrease. For Claire’s Antiques, examples of their variable costs would be manufacturing labor, raw materials, and manufacturing overhead. Examples of manufacturing overhead would be the utilities that are used in the production facility, and the oils and lubricants used in the machinery. Fixed costs in a manufacturing company are those costs that remain constant regardless of the level of production. Examples of fixed costs for Claire’s Antiques are: sales and administrative costs, rent and/or mortgage on the production facility, and depreciation. Semi-variable, or mixed, costs are costs that have both fixed and variable costs. An example of a semi-variable cost could be if Claire’s leases their delivery trucks, and the lease includes a mileage fee. The monthly lease would be considered a fixed costs, but the mileage fee would be a variable cost. (Hofstrand, 2007). In most cases, fixed costs are usually higher than variable costs, and can absorb a great deal of profits. Because of this, some companies may consider converting their fixed costs to variable costs.
- Allocations of fixed costs that appear to be variable costs. This happens when fixed costs are unitized or stated on a per unit basis. Examples include fixed general and administrative costs like administrative salaries. These costs
Variable costs: “Variable costs are costs that vary with the volume of activity”2 and they are: direct labor, Materials, Material spoilage & direct department expenses.
An example of this would be the materials needed to make a specific product. Indirect costs are those which cannot be directly allocated to a specific product or service. This might be the postage or telephone costs, which cannot normally be allocated to just one product or service. When we add the direct and indirect costs together we get what are known as the Total costs for the product or service. We also need to make certain that we understand what is meant by the term profit.
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...
There are two main types of cost accounting systems, job costing and process costing. In job costing, each job is tracked separately. For example, a company that install roofs can keep track of each cost separately. They can easily track labor by tracking the total amount of human hours spent of the job and what each person was paid. Materials can easily be tracked by tracking the total costs of supplies needed to complete the job. For job costing the total costs of each job can be easily tracked. Some examples of professions that use job costing are carpenters, painters, and computer repair. In process costing, a large number of the same or very similar products are produced in large numbers - examples include
Variable Cost- Total cost is a sum of fixed cost and variable cost. The expensive that are fluctuated with the output quantity called variable cost. (book references). The variable cost of Apple is labour that is depended on production of new product, meet the needs of existing orders, the need of labour can be fluctuated. All costs on material used in production, wages, and utilities of Apple Company are variable costs.
Variable costs- these are costs that change depending on amount of use and output of sales and the capacity of production e.g. Electricity, parts and materials.
Total cost is all of the expenses incurred in the production of a product, to include fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs, are expenses that are constant and do not change from month to month regardless of the amount of products sold. For instance, the rent of the factory is considered a fixed cost, for the reason that, the rent must be paid whether products are produced and sold or not. Variable costs,
Cost can be divided into fixed and variable and by considering into fact that fixed and variable cost can be unarguably split into two, even though they behave differently based on the level of sales of volumes. Since, cost is used in every field to determine the price of an item and the unit sold. Two of the main components of cost are fixed and variable cost and is used to differentiate between the costs that have no direct correlation to business and those that do.
Variable costs, are costs that can be reduced for example, electrical and gas costs are variable cost because the price is fluctuating all the time, it is not set to the same amount because it changes due to energy consumption made by the business.
In simple terms, indirect costs are those costs not willingly identified with a specific organizational activity or project but experienced for the joint benefit of both projects and other doings. Indirect costs are usually grouped into common pools and charged to promoting objectives through an allocation process or indirect cost rate.
Managerial accountants have many definitions, with several very constant characteristics. Professor Michael Bromwich (1988) states that management accounting is "future-oriented, is dynamic, produces forward looking figures and is meant to be decision and control relevant, should not be too concerned with objectivity and is not generally subject to external regulations" (p. 26).
Additionally, there are semi –variable (or mixed) costs. A “semi-variable cost” is a “cost that has both fixed and variable components. This cost is fixed for a set amount of produced products or sold services and becomes variable after this amount of production/sales is exceeded. If no production occurs, the fixed component still occurs”. (Definition http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/semivariablecost.asp).
Labor costs enter into two categories: fixed costs and variable costs. Fixed costs refer to salaries of core staff or permanent staff and variable costs to hourly or casual staff. Labor costs are the highest costs in food and beverages operations. On the other hand food costs are said variable costs. Thus controlling labor costs is fundamental in increasing revenue. Also the reduction of food cost will add revenue and make business more sustainable.