Hi bp72-ga,
The short answer to your question is NO - equal concern should not be
placed on management accounting statements and techniques.
There are several reasons for this (most of which bring out the
differences between management and financial accounting):
1. Users of management accounting statements are internal (ie.
employees and management of the organization), and so there is no
motivation to generate false reports.
2. The reports generated by management accounting focus on the future,
and thus are an important tool for decision making. By contrast,
financial reports are based on the past and are typically used to
gauge the success of the company.
3. There is no requirement for management accounting statements in an
organization by federal or state law - however, most corporations
realize its has huge benefits and use it extensively.
4. As a result of these statements not being required, there is no
standard (such as GAAP or IAS in financial accounting) that applied to
management accounting. Instead, it can be though of as a set of
techniques used improve the way the company operates.
You can see that the environments and regulations surrounding the two
fields of accounting are vastly different, and therefore it is
unreasonable to be skeptic of management accountant in the same way
that many have recently become about accountants that prepare
financial statements.
Hope that helps :)
answerguru-ga |
