Management Accounting

It has been found that management accounts are invaluable when it comes to a company making important and timely management decisions about their business.

It is clear that different businesses will have different management accounting needs and this will depend on the areas that the business finds are most important to them. A few examples of the areas that may be as follows;

- The sales process: this includes distribution, debtors and pricing.
- The purchasing process – this area includes records of stock levels and creditors.
- Records regarding employees.
- A fixed asset register

Companies are under no legal obligation to draw up management accounts; however, many find that it makes running a business so much simpler if they do prepare the accounts. In fact, many companies produce them as regularly as monthly or quarterly.

Management accounts are usually for analysing the recent past performances of the business and also usually study elements that look at the future of the company as well. This can include looking at profit forecasts, cashflow and sales. The figures found from this analysis are compared against figures that have been gathered from past forecasts and budgets.

The information gathered for the management accounting is usually broken down so that the performance of different parts of the company can all be measured separately to ensure that they are all working to the best of their abilities. An example of this is that a specific product could be monitored in order to see how well it has done across different outlets.

Businesses who are selling a variety of products are advised to produce a financial breakdown for each of them. This will allow you to make sure that very profitable products are not subsidising those that are failing to sell as well.

By organising the financial side of your company in this way, you will be able to monitor trends in the business, therefore highlighting any variations in your income and...