Functional Areas of Business

Dynamic companies use their internal budgets to make course adjustments throughout the year. For instance, if a product or service is not doing well in the first half of the year in comparison to the forecast or budget, the management team can use that information to make necessary changes or to scale back operations until market trends or the economy changes. Managerial accounts are the value creator for the organization (Collier, 2003). Their forward-looking capacity will help the organization to plan and make decisions for future profitability. The management accountants have a dual role to perform in an organization. The management accountant works as a strategic partner to provide strategic based financial and operational information (Collier, 2003). They are also responsible for business team management in organizations. The management accountant plays a prominent role in preparing financial reports, risk, and regulatory reporting, aggregating financial information, forecasting and planning important organizational information. Managerial accountants often perform cost analysis of products and divisions, which include variable and fixed costs. The production decisions made by managers are a direct result of information received from managerial accountants.

These three function groups are categorised based on their fundamental and immediate functions required to carry on the primary and ancillary (supportive) business processes. These three groups cannot operate independently, as they are interdependent for execution of their respective tasks or

 Managerial accounting is defined as the activities carried out in a firm to provide its managers and other employees with financial and related information to help them make strategic, organizational, and operational decisions.

Companies prepare budgets because it is a fundamental part of their planning process. Preparing budgets gives a company a quantitative plan that will be used to complete a project or strategy.

The main functional areas of a business are marketing, human resource, finance, information systems and production. All these interact with each other in different ways but all contribute to effective management. Management would not be completely effective if one of the above areas are missing. They are all needed in different ways to make sure that the business reaches objectives, achieves effectiveness and efficiency and while doing this trying to get a balance in which they can satisfy different stakeholders.

In conclusion management accounting and management accountant become more important in the organization to ensure organization can implement their strategy successful in order to achieve its short-term and long term objective with gain competitive advantages worldwide and increase market

Every business is managed through multiple business functions each responsible for managing certain aspects of the business. There are four main types of operations found within businesses:

Accounting has a primary function to provide and develop data measuring the performance and disclosure of the company or organization to assist managers, investors, tax authorities and decision makers. The individual in the role of accounting is called an accountant and he or she has the responsibility to prepare financial statements such as balance sheets, income statements, and cash flows. The different categories for accounting are financial, cost, internal and external accounting. Finance has a function of decision making. The financial manager or consultant is an individual who performs the decision making process and uses the information provided from the accountant to an organization about possible losses and profits. Finance has

According to Will S, Ray H, & Eric E.N. (2009), management accounting is a branch of accounting that is concerned with providing information to managers who direct and control the firm’s operations. Management directing function seeks to effectively use both the human and raw material wealth of a firm to achieve organizational set objectives on routine basis. Controlling function is the art of tele-guarding the activities of the organization to consistently fall in line with set objectives. Management accounting achieves this function through effective budgeting.

Managerial accounting provides essential data about the functions within the business. The reports that are provided by the managerial accountants focus on the performance of the business and the business environment. Managerial accounting is manager oriented and managerial accounting focus on the accounting duties of a manager. Managerial accounting is used on a day to day operation providing an analysis of cost and the cost benefits. Managerial accounting function as a source for the business developments and the capital budgeting. The primary concern with managerial accounting is to provide positive outcomes in the business production and the profit.

Businesses have many functional areas, these are important in ensuring the business runs efficiently. Here I have described 4 functional areas that most large businesses and organizations should have.

The first impression of the course managerial accounting for managers was that it would involve learning how to manage operations of a firm, especially in relation to its financial records and activities to ensure efficient and successful operation of a firm. I expected to learn how to deal with the final financial records and using them to perform an analysis of the records which will help to make informed decisions. It would also involve learning how to deal with the accounting records to make effective budget plans in considerations of resources available. My expectations of the course

3. Managerial Accounting deals with procuring of data for the organisation's management i.e. to serve the internal users with necessary accounting information to carry out the management tasks of planning, organising, actualising and controlling. " Management Accounting is the presentation of accounting Information in such a way as to assist management in creation of policy and in the day to day operations of an undertaking". 4. Financial Management deals with the process adopted by an organisation for taking financial decisions through analysing and interpretation of financial data for meeting the organisations objectives.

The Accountant is in-charge of the efficient and effective operation of the Finance Division of FAM and reports directly to the CEO. The responsibilities of the Accountant include:

The structure of an organization will affect its financial management. Generally financial accounting is for outside use so they emphasize external reporting; which means they report to third parties such as; Medicare, Medicaid and other government entities and health plan payers. Managerial accounting is considered to be prospective as well as retrospective. It is of the upmost importance that the accountant must follow the guidelines principles and ethical standards of planning, controlling, organizing and directing, and decision making if they want to be successful at their job.