Is management accounting an accounting function?
Can financial accounting be converted to management accounting?
I have implemented many general ledger systems, which invariably reduced the number of accountants needed. When addressing the issue of what to do with excess accountants, the package vendor and management would say they should perform analysis or become “management accountants”.
I was never successful in getting accountants to perform real analysis. The best I could get was rule-based “analysis” like if the ratio of account a to b is greater than c to d it means … But, everyone always seemed happy that excess accountants could stay and go through the motions of producing “management accounting” reports.
Does management accounting maintain records capital?
I always looked at accounting as maintaining corporation financial and statistical records as the records sub-set of information capital. Real management accounting requires the capability to derive meaningful management intelligence from financial and statistical data against an understanding of the business, plans, and budgets. What do you think management accounting means? Is management accounting an accounting function? Should “management accountants” have analytical aptitude?
Management accounting should be intelligence capital
Management accounting is similar to data analysis that produces management intelligence. Management accounting is records analysis to gain management intelligence from enterprise records. We need to understand this so that we can stop expecting accountants to be intelligence researchers and analysts and so that we can finally set up the management intelligence capital and capabilities needed by the enterprise.
Result-performance Management (R-pM) shows how to manage accounting and information capital
Now there is Result-performance Management (R-pM). Learn the Basics of R-pM from articles under that category, or join the R-pM community to download information on R-pM.
