In management accounting or managerial accounting, managers use
accounting
Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the "languag ...
information in decision-making and to assist in the
management
Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.
Management includes the activities o ...
and performance of their control functions.
Definition
One simple definition of management accounting is the provision of financial and non-financial decision-making information to managers. In other words, management accounting helps the directors inside an organization to make decisions. This can also be known as Cost Accounting. This is the way toward distinguishing, examining, deciphering and imparting data to supervisors to help accomplish business goals. The information gathered includes all fields of accounting that educates the administration regarding business tasks identifying with the financial expenses and decisions made by the organization. Accountants use plans to measure the overall strategy of operations within the organization.
According to the
Institute of Management Accountants
The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), formerly known as the National Association of Cost Accountants (NACA), is a professional organization of accountants.
History
IMA was founded in 1919 in Buffalo, New York as the National Associ ...
(IMA), "Management accounting is a profession that involves partnering in management decision making, devising planning and performance management systems, and providing expertise in financial reporting and control to assist management in the formulation and implementation of an organization's strategy".
Management accountants (also called managerial accountants) look at the events that happen in and around a business while considering the needs of the business. From this, data and estimates emerge. Cost accounting is the process of translating these estimates and data into knowledge that will ultimately be used to guide decision-making.
The
Chartered Institute of Management Accountants
The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) is the global professional management accounting body based out of the UK. CIMA offers training and qualification in management accountancy and related subjects. It is focused on accountan ...
(CIMA) being the largest management accounting institute with over 100,000 members describes Management accounting as analysing information to advise business strategy and drive sustainable business success.
Scope, practice, and application
The Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) states management accounting as a practice that extends to the following three areas:
*
Strategic management
In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of Resource management, resour ...
— advancing the role of the management accountant as a strategic partner in the organization
*
Performance management
Performance management (PM) is the process of ensuring that a set of activities and outputs meets an organization's goals in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of a whole organization, a ...
— developing the practice of business decision-making and managing the performance of the organization
*
Risk management — contributing to frameworks and practices for identifying, measuring, managing and reporting risks to the achievement of the objectives of the organization
The
Institute of Certified Management Accountants
The Institute of Certified Management Accountants (ICMA) is an Australian organisation operating globally, focused on management accounting. It differs from other Australian Accounting societies: CPA Australia, Institute of Chartered Accountants ...
(CMA) states, "A management accountant applies his or her professional knowledge and skill in the preparation and presentation of financial and other decision oriented information in such a way as to assist management in the formulation of policies and in the planning and control of the operation undertaking".
Management accountants are seen as the "value-creators" amongst the accountants. They are more concerned with forward-looking and taking decisions that will affect the future of the organization; than in the historical recording and compliance (score keeping) aspects of the profession. Management accounting knowledge and experience can be obtained from varied fields and functions within an organization, such as information management, treasury, efficiency auditing, marketing, valuation, pricing, and logistics. In 2014 CIMA created the Global Management Accounting Principles (GMAPs). The result of research from across 20 countries in five continents, the principles aim to guide best practice in the discipline.
Financial versus Management accounting
Management accounting information differs from
financial accountancy
Financial accounting is the field of accounting concerned with the summary, analysis and reporting of financial transactions related to a business. This involves the preparation of financial statements available for public use. Stockholders, s ...
information in several ways:
* while shareholders, creditors, and public regulators use publicly reported financial accountancy, information, only managers within the organization use the normally confidential management accounting information
* while financial accountancy information is historical, management accounting information is primarily forward-looking;
* while financial accountancy information is case-based, management accounting information is model-based with a degree of abstraction in order to support generic decision making;
* while financial accountancy information is computed by reference to general financial accounting standards, management accounting information is computed by reference to the needs of managers, often using
management information system
A management information system (MIS) is an information system used for decision-making, and for the coordination, control, analysis, and visualization of information in an organization. The study of the management information systems involves peop ...
s.
Focus:
* Financial accounting focuses on the company as a whole.
* Management accounting provides detailed and disaggregated information about products, individual activities, divisions, plants, operations and tasks.
Traditional versus innovative practices
The distinction between traditional and innovative accounting practices is illustrated with the visual timeline ''(see sidebar)'' of managerial costing approaches presented at the
Institute of Management Accountants
The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), formerly known as the National Association of Cost Accountants (NACA), is a professional organization of accountants.
History
IMA was founded in 1919 in Buffalo, New York as the National Associ ...
2011 Annual Conference.
Traditional standard costing (TSC), used in
cost accounting
Cost accounting is defined as "a systematic set of procedures for recording and reporting measurements of the cost of manufacturing goods and performing services in the aggregate and in detail. It includes methods for recognizing, classifying, al ...
, dates back to the 1920s and is a central method in management accounting practiced today because it is used for financial statement reporting for the valuation of income statement and balance sheet line items such as
cost of goods sold
Cost of goods sold (COGS) is the carrying value of goods sold during a particular period.
Costs are associated with particular goods using one of the several formulas, including specific identification, first-in first-out (FIFO), or average cost ...
(COGS) and inventory valuation. Traditional
standard costing
Standard cost accounting is a traditional cost accounting method introduced in the 1920s, as an alternative for the traditional cost accounting method based on historical costs. Adolph Matz (1962) ''Cost accounting.'' p. 584.
Overview
Standard c ...
must comply with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP US) and actually aligns itself more with answering financial accounting requirements rather than providing solutions for management accountants. Traditional approaches limit themselves by defining cost behavior only in terms of production or sales volume.
In the late 1980s, accounting practitioners and educators were heavily criticized on the grounds that management accounting practices (and, even more so, the curriculum taught to accounting students) had changed little over the preceding 60 years, despite radical changes in the business environment. In 1993, the Accounting Education Change Commission Statement Number 4
calls for faculty members to expand their knowledge about the actual practice of accounting in the workplace. Professional accounting institutes, perhaps fearing that management accountants would increasingly be seen as superfluous in business organizations, subsequently devoted considerable resources to the development of a more innovative skills set for management accountants.
Variance analysis is a systematic approach to the comparison of the actual and budgeted costs of the raw materials and labour used during a production period. While some form of variance analysis is still used by most manufacturing firms, it nowadays tends to be used in conjunction with innovative techniques such as ''
life cycle cost analysis'' and ''activity-based costing'', which are designed with specific aspects of the modern business environment in mind. ''Life-cycle costing'' recognizes that managers' ability to influence the cost of manufacturing a product is at its greatest when the product is still at the design stage of its product life-cycle (i.e., before the design has been finalized and production commenced), since small changes to the product design may lead to significant savings in the cost of manufacturing the products.
Activity-based costing
Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that identifies activities in an organization and assigns the cost of each activity to all products and services according to the actual consumption by each. Therefore, this model assigns more in ...
(ABC) recognizes that, in modern factories, most manufacturing costs are determined by the amount of 'activities' (e.g., the number of production runs per month, and the amount of production equipment idle time) and that the key to effective cost control is therefore optimizing the efficiency of these activities. Both lifecycle costing and activity-based costing recognize that, in the typical modern factory, the avoidance of disruptive events (such as machine breakdowns and quality control failures) is of far greater importance than (for example) reducing the costs of raw materials. Activity-based costing also de-emphasizes direct labor as a cost driver and concentrates instead on activities that drive costs, as the provision of a service or the production of a product component.
Other approach is the German
Grenzplankostenrechnung
Grenzplankostenrechnung (GPK) is a German costing methodology, developed in the late 1940s and 1950s, designed to provide a consistent and accurate application of how managerial costs are calculated and assigned to a product or service. The term Gr ...
(GPK) costing methodology. Although it has been in practiced in Europe for more than 50 years, neither GPK nor the proper treatment of 'unused capacity' is widely practiced in the U.S.
Another accounting practice available today is
resource consumption accounting
Resource Consumption Accounting (RCA) is a management theory describing a dynamic, integrated, and comprehensive management accounting approach that provides managers with decision support information for enterprise optimization. RCA is a relative ...
(RCA). RCA has been recognized by the
International Federation of Accountants
The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) is the global advocacy organization for the accountancy profession; mainly for the financial accounting and auditing professions. Founded in 1977, IFAC has more than 175 members and associates in ...
(IFAC) as a "sophisticated approach at the upper levels of the continuum of costing techniques"
The approach provides the ability to derive costs directly from operational resource data or to isolate and measure unused capacity costs. RCA was derived by taking costing characteristics of GPK, and combining the use of activity-based drivers when needed, such as those used in activity-based costing.
A modern approach to close accounting is continuous accounting, which focuses on achieving a point-in-time close, where accounting processes typically performed at period-end are distributed evenly throughout the period.
Role within a corporation
Consistent with other roles in modern corporations, management accountants have a dual reporting relationship. As a strategic partner and provider of decision based financial and operational information, management accountants are responsible for managing the business team and at the same time having to report relationships and responsibilities to the corporation's finance organization and finance of an organization.
The activities management accountants provide inclusive of forecasting and planning, performing variance analysis, reviewing and monitoring costs inherent in the business are ones that have dual accountability to both finance and the business team. Examples of tasks where accountability may be more meaningful to the business management team vs. the corporate finance department are the development of new product costing,
operations research
Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...
, business driver metrics, sales management scorecarding, and client profitability analysis. (See
financial planning
In general usage, a financial plan is a comprehensive evaluation of an individual's current pay and future financial state by using current known variables to predict future income, asset values and withdrawal plans. This often includes a bu ...
.) Conversely, the preparation of certain financial reports, reconciliations of the financial data to source systems, risk and regulatory reporting will be more useful to the corporate finance team as they are charged with aggregating certain financial information from all segments of the corporation.
In corporations that derive much of their profits from the
information economy
Information economy is an economy with an increased emphasis on informational activities and information industry, where information is valued as a capital good. The term was coined by Marc Porat, a graduate student at Stanford University, who ...
, such as banks, publishing houses, telecommunications companies and defence contractors, IT costs are a significant source of uncontrollable spending, which in size is often the greatest corporate cost after total compensation costs and property related costs. A function of management accounting in such organizations is to work closely with the IT department to provide
IT cost transparency
IT cost transparency is a category of information technology management software and systems that enables enterprise IT organizations to model and track the total cost to deliver and maintain the IT Services they provide to the business. It is ...
.
Given the above, one view of the progression of the accounting and finance career path is that financial accounting is a stepping stone to management accounting. Consistent with the notion of value creation, management accountants help drive the success of the business while strict financial accounting is more of a compliance and historical endeavor.
Specific methodologies
Activity-based costing (ABC)
Activity-based costing was first clearly defined in 1987 by Robert S. Kaplan and W. Bruns as a chapter in their book Accounting and Management: A Field Study Perspective. They initially focused on the manufacturing industry, where increasing technology and productivity improvements have reduced the relative proportion of the direct costs of labor and materials, but have increased relative proportion of indirect costs. For example, increased automation has reduced labor, which is a direct cost, but has increased depreciation, which is an indirect cost.
Grenzplankostenrechnung
Grenzplankostenrechnung (GPK) is a German costing methodology, developed in the late 1940s and 1960s, designed to provide a consistent and accurate application of how managerial costs are calculated and assigned to a product or service. The term Grenzplankostenrechnung, often referred to as GPK, has best been translated as either ''marginal planned cost accounting'' or ''flexible analytic cost planning and accounting''.
The origins of GPK are credited to Hans Georg Plaut, an automotive engineer, and Wolfgang Kilger, an academic, working towards the mutual goal of identifying and delivering a sustained methodology designed to correct and enhance cost accounting information. GPK is published in cost accounting textbooks, notably ''Flexible Plankostenrechnung und Deckungsbeitragsrechnung'' and taught at German-speaking universities.
Lean accounting (accounting for lean enterprise)
In the mid- to late-1990s several books were written about accounting in the lean enterprise (companies implementing elements of the
Toyota Production System
The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an integrated socio-technical system, developed by Toyota, that comprises its management philosophy and practices. The TPS is a management system that organizes manufacturing and logistics for the automobile ma ...
). The term ''lean accounting'' was coined during that period. These books contest that traditional accounting methods are better suited for mass production and do not support or measure good business practices in just-in-time manufacturing and services. The movement reached a tipping point during the 2005 Lean Accounting Summit in
Dearborn,
Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
, United States. 320 individuals attended and discussed the advantages of a new approach to accounting in the lean enterprise. 520 individuals attended the 2nd annual conference in 2006 and it has varied between 250 and 600 attendees since that time.
Resource consumption accounting (RCA)
Resource consumption accounting (RCA) is formally defined as a dynamic, fully integrated, principle-based, and comprehensive management accounting approach that provides managers with decision support information for enterprise optimization. RCA emerged as a management accounting approach around 2000 and was subsequently developed at CAM-I, the Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing–International, in a Cost Management Section ''RCA interest group'' in December 2001.
Throughput accounting
The most significant recent direction in managerial accounting is throughput accounting; which recognizes the interdependencies of modern production processes. For any given product, customer or supplier, it is a tool to measure the contribution per unit of constrained resource.
Transfer pricing
Management accounting is an applied discipline used in various industries. The specific functions and principles followed can vary based on the industry. Management accounting principles in banking are specialized but do have some common fundamental concepts used whether the industry is manufacturing-based or service-oriented. For example, transfer pricing is a concept used in manufacturing but is also applied in banking. It is a fundamental principle used in assigning value and revenue attribution to the various business units. Essentially, transfer pricing in banking is the method of assigning the interest rate risk of the bank to the various funding sources and uses of the enterprise. Thus, the bank's corporate treasury department will assign funding charges to the business units for their use of the bank's resources when they make loans to clients. The treasury department will also assign funding credit to business units who bring in deposits (resources) to the bank. Although the
funds transfer pricing
The Fund Transfer Pricing (FTP) measures the contribution by each source of funding to the overall profitability in a financial institution. Funds that go toward lending products are charged to asset-generating businesses whereas funds generated by ...
process is primarily applicable to the loans and deposits of the various banking units, this proactive is applied to all assets and liabilities of the business segment. Once transfer pricing is applied and any other management accounting entries or adjustments are posted to the ledger (which are usually memo accounts and are not included in the legal entity results), the business units are able to produce segment financial results which are used by both internal and external users to evaluate performance.
Resources and continuous learning
There are a variety of ways to keep current and continue to build one's knowledge base in the field of management accounting.
Certified Management Accountants (CMAs) are required to achieve continuing education hours every year, similar to a
Certified Public Accountant
Certified Public Accountant (CPA) is the title of qualified accountants in numerous countries in the English-speaking world. It is generally equivalent to the title of chartered accountant in other English-speaking countries. In the United Sta ...
. A company may also have research and training materials available for use in a corporate owned library. This is more common in
Fortune 500
The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...
companies who have the resources to fund this type of training medium.
There are also journals, online articles and blogs available. The journal ''Cost Management'' () and the Institute of Management Accounting (IMA)
Institute of Management Accounting
site are sources which include '' Management Accounting Quarterly'' and ''Strategic Finance'' publications.
Tasks and services provided
Listed below are the primary tasks/services performed by management accountants. The degree of complexity relative to these activities are dependent on the experience level and abilities of any one individual.
* Rate and volume analysis
* Business metrics development
* Price modeling
* Product profitability
* Geographic vs. industry or client segment reporting
* Sales management scorecards
* Cost analysis
In Production (economics), production, research, retail, and accounting, a cost is the value of money that has been used up to produce something or deliver a service, and hence is not available for use anymore. In business, the cost may be one o ...
* Cost–benefit analysis
Cost–benefit analysis (CBA), sometimes also called benefit–cost analysis, is a systematic approach to estimating the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives. It is used to determine options which provide the best approach to achieving benefits ...
* Cost-volume-profit analysis
* Life cycle cost analysis
* Client profitability analysis
* IT cost transparency
IT cost transparency is a category of information technology management software and systems that enables enterprise IT organizations to model and track the total cost to deliver and maintain the IT Services they provide to the business. It is ...
* Capital budgeting
Capital budgeting in corporate finance is the planning process used to determine whether an organization's long term capital investments such as new machinery, replacement of machinery, new plants, new products, and research development project ...
* Buy vs. lease analysis
* Strategic planning
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to attain strategic goals.
It may also extend to control mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the st ...
* Strategic management advice
* Internal financial presentation and communication
* Sales forecasting
Sales operations is a set of business activities and processes that help a sales organization run effectively, efficiently and in support of business strategies and objectives. Sales operations may also be referred to as sales, sales support, or b ...
* Financial forecasting
* Annual budgeting
* Cost allocation
Cost allocation is a process of providing relief to shared service organization's cost centers that provide a product or service. In turn, the associated expense is assigned to internal clients' cost centers that consume the products and service ...
Related qualifications
There are several related professional qualifications and certifications in the field of accountancy including:
* Management Accountancy Qualifications
** CIMA
** ICMA
** ICAI-CMA
** ICMAP
The ''Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Pakistan'' (ICMAP) is a professional accounting body offering qualification and training in management accountancy.
The Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Pakistan was established ...
** CMA
* Other Professional Accountancy Qualifications
** Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy
The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) is a professional institute for accountants working in the public services, national audit agencies, in major accountancy firms, and in other bodies where public money needs to be m ...
, CIPFA
** Chartered Certified Accountant
Founded in 1904, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) is the global professional accounting body offering the Chartered Certified Accountant qualification (ACCA). It has 240,952 members and 541,930 future members worldwi ...
( ACCA)
** Cost & Management Accountant ( CMA)
** Chartered Accountant ( CA)
** Certified Public Accountant
Certified Public Accountant (CPA) is the title of qualified accountants in numerous countries in the English-speaking world. It is generally equivalent to the title of chartered accountant in other English-speaking countries. In the United Sta ...
( CPA)
*** American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
** Certified Practicing Accountant (CPA Australia)
** Chartered Global Management Accountant
Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) is a professional management accounting designation issued beginning in January 2012. The Chartered Global Management Accountant's mission is to promote the science of management accounting on global st ...
Methods
* Activity-based costing
Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that identifies activities in an organization and assigns the cost of each activity to all products and services according to the actual consumption by each. Therefore, this model assigns more in ...
* Grenzplankostenrechnung
Grenzplankostenrechnung (GPK) is a German costing methodology, developed in the late 1940s and 1950s, designed to provide a consistent and accurate application of how managerial costs are calculated and assigned to a product or service. The term Gr ...
(GPK)
* Lean accounting
Lean, leaning or LEAN may refer to:
Business practices
* Lean thinking, a business methodology adopted in various fields
** Lean construction, an adaption of lean manufacturing principles to the design and construction process
** Lean governm ...
* Resource consumption accounting
Resource Consumption Accounting (RCA) is a management theory describing a dynamic, integrated, and comprehensive management accounting approach that provides managers with decision support information for enterprise optimization. RCA is a relative ...
* Standard cost accounting
* Throughput accounting
Throughput accounting (TA) is a principle-based and simplified management accounting approach that provides managers with decision support information for enterprise profitability improvement. TA is relatively new in management accounting. It is a ...
* Transfer pricing
In taxation and accounting, transfer pricing refers to the rules and methods for pricing transactions within and between enterprises under common ownership or control. Because of the potential for cross-border controlled transactions to distort ...
See also
* Managerial risk accounting
Managerial Risk Accounting is concerned with the generation, dissemination and use of risk related accounting information to managers within organisations to enable them to judge and shape the risk situation of the organisation according to the obj ...
* Profit model
The profit model is the linear, deterministic algebraic model used implicitly by most cost accountants. Starting with, profit equals sales minus costs, it provides a structure for modeling cost elements such as materials, losses, multi-products, ...
References
best_accounting_software.html" ;"title="https://aimsoftech.com/">best accounting software">https://aimsoftech.com/">best accounting software
Further reading
* Kurt Heisinger and Joe Hoyle
Managerial Accounting
.
* James R. Martin, Ph.D., CMA
External links
CAM-I Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing–International
AICPA Financial Management Center
– resource for CPAs working in business, industry and government
Institute of Management Accountants
– resource for management accountants (CMAs) working in industry
Chartered Institute of Management Accountants
International Federation of Accountants
The Institute of Cost Accountants of India
{{Authority control
Types of accounting
Accounting terminology