What Is Managerial Accounting?

Management Accounting is the abbreviation of Cost Management Accounting and is a management term. Management accounting is a branch of corporate accounting that is separated from the traditional accounting system and parallel to financial accounting. It focuses on making optimal decisions for enterprises, improving management and improving economic benefits. To this end, management accounting needs to meet the needs of enterprise management departments in preparing plans, making decisions, and controlling economic activities, recording and analyzing economic operations, "capturing" and reporting management information, and directly participating in decision-making control processes. ^[1]

Basic Information

Chinese name

Management Accounting

Foreign name

Management Accounting

nickname

Analysis report accounting

Features

Improve business economic benefits

Types of

Business Accounting Branch

Certificate

Management accountant

Management Accounting

"Management Accounting" is a professional course for business administration majors. Management accounting is a service for strengthening internal business management and improving economic benefits. It uses a series of specialized methods to collect, analyze, and report various economic information, so as to make predictions and decisions, formulate plans, and control business operations. Evaluate performance to ensure that companies improve their management and economic benefits. This course is the knowledge that students should have on the basis of mastering the ability of accounting and improving the ability to expand and participate in business management in the future. Through systematic learning, students should be able to master the basic theories, methods, and techniques of management accounting, and have the ability to use economic information to make predictions, decisions, and control, analyze, and evaluate business operations. ^[2]

Textile, railway, steel industry

The function of modern management accounting extends from the simple accounting of financial accounting to the organic combination of analyzing the past, controlling the present, and planning for the future.

Parsing the past

Management accounting analysis in the past is mainly to further process, restructure and extend the information provided by financial accounting to make it better suited to the needs of planning the future and controlling the present.

Control now

The role of management accounting in control is to correct timely deviations in the implementation process through a series of index systems, so that the economic activities of the enterprise can be carried out efficiently and strictly in accordance with the predetermined track of decision-making.

Planning for the future

Forecasting and decision-making are the main forms of planning for the future. The role of modern management accounting in this regard is to make full use of the wealth of information available and carry out it closely.

Challenges Brought by the New Manufacturing Environment Since the 1980s, the manufacturing environment of enterprises has undergone fundamental changes. The company's production control system began to adopt Just-in-time scheduling, pursue zero defects, zero inventory, and began to adopt cooperative and flexible management policies. On the other hand, the manufacturing process of enterprises is generally adopted

Difficult mission From the perspective of theoretical research, before the 1970s, theoretical research on management accounting was mainly normative research. The guiding ideology that different costs serve different purposes and

Management accounting research has different focuses in different periods, and it is all affected by the evolution of its technical methods. It has roughly gone through the following four stages: the first stage emphasizes cost recognition, mainly focusing on

During the transformation period, the internal and external environment of the company is forcing the company to find a more effective financial model. The financial organization of the company needs to become a bridge linking the company's strategy, operations and performance. And supervision to ensure the sustainable development of the enterprise value chain and enhance the comprehensive competitiveness of the enterprise. These requirements are precisely the purpose and the goal of management accounting services. Management accounting is an important tool for financial transformation and upgrading.

The core of financial transformation is the transformation of financial personnel. At present, the battlefield where financial managers create value has shifted, and strategic decision support and operational process management and control are the areas that generate the most value. For enterprises facing transformation or transforming, cultivating high-quality personnel who meet the above requirements is a major bottleneck, and the construction of management and accounting personnel is particularly urgent.

1. Objects of Management Accounting

The object of management accounting is value management based on use value.

In essence, the object of management accounting is the production and operation activities of enterprises;

From the perspective of the economic benefits of management, the object of management accounting is the value movement in the production and operation activities of enterprises;

From a practical point of view, the object of management accounting is a composite of job management and value management.

2. Objectives of Management Accounting

The ultimate goal of management accounting is to improve the economic benefits of the business

The specific objectives are: 1) to provide information for management and decision-making 2) to participate in the operation and management of enterprises

3. Functions of Management Accounting

Forecast, decision, planning (budget), control, evaluation

4. Quality characteristics of management accounting information

Relevance, accuracy, consistency, objectivity, flexibility, timeliness, simplicity, cost-effectiveness

5. Working procedures of management accounting

1) Confirm that the economic activities and other economic matters of the enterprise are identified as appropriate management accounting operations.

2) Measurement, that is, quantitative determination of the occurrence or possible occurrence of operating activities in currency or other units of measurement.

3) Collection, that is, the business activities and other economic matters of the enterprise are recorded and classified in a strict and consistent manner.

4) Analysis, evaluation and confirmation of the internal and external environment in which economic events occur and the internal relationship between various influencing factors.

5) Prepare reports and explanations to reflect the information required by each information demander in an appropriate form.

6) Transfer and provide relevant information to managers at all levels or other information users.

(1) Information quality characteristics First, correlation. Relevance refers to the characteristics that the information provided by management accounting is related to the decision of the management authority and helps to improve people's decision-making ability. Relevance of management accounting information refers to the characteristics needed to help information users improve their decision-making ability so that they can make the best choice. The second is timeliness. The timeliness of management accounting means that the most timely and prompt information must be provided for the decision-making of management authorities. For example, when managers require operating decisions on a project, accountants are required to provide timely information about the project's operating conditions and investment forecasts (both regular and irregular). Only timely information can help managers make correct and timely Decision making, on the other hand, outdated information will lead to decision making errors.

(II) Characteristics of Reporting Modes Due to the need for forecasting, decision-making, control and evaluation, management accounting makes management accounting reports flexible and diverse in terms of methods and methods. It does not have to report in a prescribed format like financial accounting reports, but it does not stick to a certain form or method as required, and is not restricted by traditional accounting concepts and models. It can freely apply various scientific forecasting methods ( Including mathematical and statistical methods) to choose the best way to report to inform decision makers.

(3) Features of management functions Whether it is financial accounting or management accounting, its functions serve the business management. However, the management accounting report mainly provides timely and effective management and decision-making information for the internal managers of the enterprise. In order to strengthen the internal management of the enterprise, it is necessary to emphasize the control before and during the event, and to plan the future by preparing a comprehensive budget and responsibility budget report. Control and evaluation of production and operation. The financial accounting report focuses on reflecting the company's past financial situation and operating results.

The importance of cost management

With the steady development of the world economy, the most challenging problem facing corporate managers is not "how to succeed" but "how to continue to succeed", according to the survey report by the American Productivity Association and the Management Accounting Association: The twentieth century The world's major companies put "growth" first, but in the 21st century, they put "cost" first. It can be seen that companies have attached great importance to cost control and management. It is a continuous success One of the key factors.

China's manufacturing industry and even the world's manufacturing industry have entered the era of low profit, and Chinese manufacturing industry is facing increasingly fierce market competition. China's manufacturing industry has serious waste of resources, high inputs and lower output than international standards, and product homogeneity is more common.

External environmental impacts Impact of the economic system environment. Management Accounting by Decision Accounting and Execution

Cost accounting and management accounting are the core courses of accounting and financial management in colleges and universities. For a long time, cost accounting and management accounting, as two different disciplines, have been expanding their respective functions. The cross-reflection between the research content of cost accounting and management accounting is reflected in the course textbooks, which is a lot of repetition of teaching content. This situation not only wastes valuable teaching resources, but also is not conducive to the optimization of students' knowledge structure and the cultivation of professional competence . Therefore, there is a tendency to integrate two courses into one course in the teaching process of colleges and universities. The author intends to interpret the merged mainstream of cost accounting and management accounting in terms of the discipline evolution of cost accounting and management accounting, the current domestic mainstream textbook content system and cross-repeating status, foreign mainstream related textbook system arrangements, and professional competence development expectations. And changes in teaching methods.

The status quo and reasons of the intersection of cost accounting and management accounting

1. The status quo of the intersection of cost accounting and management accounting

In the current mainstream domestic textbooks of cost accounting and management accounting, the content of cost accounting and management accounting is mainly reflected in the fact that management accounting includes many contents of cost accounting, such as the cost forecast in the forecast analysis. The cost analysis is included in the decision analysis, the cost expense budget is included in the comprehensive budget, and the responsibility cost budget and control are included in the liability accounting. In addition, the standard cost method and variable cost method, which are the main contents of management accounting, obviously also belong to the content of cost accounting. From another perspective, some aspects of management accounting are also included in cost accounting.

Reasons for the intersection of cost accounting and management accounting

(1) Same historical background and theoretical basis

From the middle of the late 19th century to the 1920s, with the completion of the British industrial revolution, manual labor was replaced by machines and manual workshops were replaced by factory systems. In order to meet the needs of business management, accountants began with accounting books. In addition, statistical methods are used to calculate costs. At this time, the emergence of cost accounting. From the perspective of cost accounting, in the early stage of cost accounting, the batch or step-by-step cost accounting system was mainly used; from the purpose of cost accounting, the cost of products was calculated to determine the cost of inventory and the cost of sales, that is, inventory valuation and Revenue recognition. Therefore, cost accounting at the start-up stage is called record-based cost accounting.

After the Second World War, modern science and technology were applied to production on a large scale, resulting in rapid development of productivity. The concentration of capital has been strengthened, a large number of multinational companies have emerged, enterprises and production scales have continued to expand, production and operations have become increasingly complex, and market competition has intensified. In order to adapt to the socio-economic development, at this time, management accounting has added the content of forecasting and decision-making, while cost accounting has proposed the concepts of target cost, quality cost, and operation cost.

Obviously, the early cost accounting and management accounting were inseparably linked. They had the same historical background and theoretical basis. The author believes that cost accounting is the common information foundation of cost accounting and control and management accounting, and their ultimate purpose is to save resources and intensive use of resources, bring out cost-effectiveness, and then exert value-creating functions and improve business performance.

(2) Theoretical researchers continue to expand into the field of accounting and management accounting

The predecessor of management accounting is cost accounting. Cost accounting focuses on the central theme of cost and studies the cost accounting and management issues; while management accounting is based on the theme of cost and in order to meet the requirements of corporate management and improve corporate economic benefits as the goal , Not only to study the cost accounting and management, but also to study the company's income, profit, investment returns and other indicators that reflect the economic benefits of the company, and to study the relationship between income, cost, and investment and profit, in order to provide a more comprehensive Complete information to help companies improve cost-effectiveness or investment benefits. Obviously, although management accounting has surpassed costs in research objects, costs are more direct, more complex, and more important in measuring and determining the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations. Therefore, it is only natural that there are many overlaps between management accounting and cost accounting. Because of this, some scholars believe that management accounting includes cost accounting. However, it should be pointed out that the research on costs of management accounting focuses on the management costs from a management perspective, especially the various future costs related to decision-making. Therefore, general management accounting works do not include traditional product costing content.

With the change of the times, cost accounting has also shifted from the initial study of product cost accounting issues to the requirements of enterprise management. It has begun to study the quality of cost information and cost management issues adapted to management needs, and the perspective of observing cost management has been expanding: Expanding from focusing only on absolute cost reduction to focusing on both absolute cost reduction and relative cost reduction; expanding from studying ex post cost management to full-process cost management; expanding from tactical cost driver analysis to strategic cost driver analysis. These extensions of cost accounting make the content of cost accounting and management accounting more consistent, and become an accounting information system of the same quality as management accounting. Therefore, from the textbooks written by professors in Europe and the United States, although the courses include management accounting, cost accounting, cost management, cost and management accounting, etc., the content is basically the same, that is, cost accounting, management accounting, cost and management accounting are similar Or the same curriculum and content system.

Advantages of combining cost accounting and management accounting courses

In view of the serious overlap between cost accounting and management accounting, the author believes that it is necessary to combine them into one, that is, to integrate cost accounting and management accounting into a discipline of cost and management accounting. This fusion has at least the following advantages:

1. Can avoid duplication of teaching content and save teaching resources

The overlapping content of the two mainly includes variable cost method, activity cost method, cost forecast, cost decision, standard cost control, cost responsibility accounting and performance evaluation.

2. Can arrange teaching content reasonably and improve teaching effect

In the teaching process, there are often situations where the content is repeatedly explained due to inadequate coordination among the teachers, or the situation is ignored. The teaching effect is relatively poor.

3. Can improve the status of the curriculum and optimize the curriculum system

Through integration, the status of the course of cost and management accounting can be greatly improved, thereby changing the thinking consciousness of financial accounting students focusing on financial accounting but not management accounting; at the same time, it can continue to optimize the professional accounting system of accounting and add new courses, such as internal control of enterprises Science, corporate strategy and risk management.

4. Conducive to the integration of the content of the two courses and the integrity of the knowledge system

At the same time, it is beneficial to the comprehensive application and decision-making optimization of the knowledge of the two courses in practice.

Integrated Mode and Content System of Cost Accounting and Management Accounting Course

Cost accounting and management accounting integration models can be broadly divided into three types: plate structure, fusion structure and application structure. The plate structure is a compilation of the main contents of cost accounting and management accounting as separate parts. The application structure is mainly to arrange its content system according to the needs of practical applications. The structures formed by these two models lack integrity and organicness. The integrated structure is to analyze and study the content that constitutes cost accounting and management accounting first, remove duplicate content, and then form a new cost and management accounting system according to their internal connections.

Focusing on the content system of cost and management accounting, cost management of domestic classic textbooks and research results of domestic scholars, we try to build a curriculum content system under the integrated structure of cost and management accounting.

The Cost and Management Accounting (13th edition) by Hengri et al. (2010) covers the main content of cost management accounting and fully reflects the latest development of cost accounting since the 1990s. Since the late 1980s, new ideas and methods in the fields of cost accounting and management accounting in Europe and the United States (especially the United States) have been reflected in teaching materials. Each chapter of this textbook is expressed in a streamlined way and gives a better and clearer explanation. The company examples are taken from many different countries and cover different industries. The cost management idea with value chain as the main line in the book represents the mainstream and trend of cost management accounting development.

The purpose of "Cost Management" by Hilton et al. (2010) is to help readers understand more about the role of cost management in the success of businesses and organizations. This book consists of 5 chapters and 20 chapters. The first chapter consists of Chapters 1 to 3, which mainly introduces and analyzes the importance of managing costs. The second chapter includes chapters 4 to 7, using cost management tools to help readers. Understand the production process; the third part of the distributed cost method and cost allocation includes Chapters 8 to 10, discussing several cost accounting and cost management tools; the fourth part of planning and decision-making includes Chapters 11 to 15, discussing cost information for decision-making Provision and use methods; the fifth chapter assesses and manages performance including chapters 16 to 20, which mainly discusses methods of performance measurement.

Combining the reading habits of Chinese readers with the trends and cultural background of Chinese enterprises' operation and management, the author believes that the integrated cost and management accounting content system mainly includes the following parts:

The first part is the basics. This chapter, as the beginning of cost and management accounting, is intended to introduce some basic concepts, basic knowledge and basic methods of cost management accounting in order to lay the foundation for the in-depth study of cost management accounting. The main content of this article includes an introduction to cost management accounting, corporate costs, revenue and profit, cost habit analysis, and cost-benefit analysis.

The second part is costing. This article focuses on production cost accounting and product cost calculation. The main contents include production cost accounting, traditional product cost calculation that adapts to the external reporting requirements of financial accounting, and variable cost calculation (variable cost method).

The third part is planning and decision accounting. Planning and decision-making accounting serves the forecasting, correct decision-making, and planning of the future in business management. The main contents include forecast analysis, short-term business decision analysis, long-term investment decision analysis, and comprehensive budget.

The fourth part is the accounting and accounting of control and performance evaluation. Control and performance evaluation accounting is to analyze the past and control the present and future economic activities in business management. The main contents include standard cost method, liability accounting, etc.

The fifth part is development. The above four articles mainly cover the basic content of traditional cost management accounting. This article focuses on the new progress of cost management accounting since the 1980s. The main content includes activity-based cost management accounting and strategic cost management accounting. Strategic cost management accounting includes strategic cost management, strategic decision analysis, strategic goal planning, and strategic performance evaluation. Specific methods include strategic positioning analysis, value chain analysis, strategic cost driver analysis, target cost calculation, and balanced scorecard.

With the optimization of the content system of the integrated cost and management accounting course, combined with changes in teaching methods, such as combining the successful experience of domestic and foreign outstanding and outstanding enterprises, the flexible use of case teaching methods, highlighting strategically-oriented value chains and multidimensional cost drivers, focusing on the market , Customers and operating processes, will definitely improve the cost and management accounting teaching effect, adapt to the background of China's economic transformation and industrial upgrading, and cultivate a large number of outstanding management accountants.

Relationship between financial management, cost accounting and management accounting

At present, the theoretical community about financial management, management accounting,

Limited by China's economic development model and management level, management accounting has not received widespread attention from the society. With the deepening of Chinese enterprises' understanding of management accounting, many central enterprises have specialized management accounting departments, and Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises have gradually realized the value of management accounting in the process of development, and hired management accounting experts to solve core problems for enterprises. Some experts believe that with the intensification of domestic market competition and the social demand for product and service diversification, the demand for management accounting will be huge.

When it comes to accounting, the first thing many people think of is financial accounting, which is responsible for year-end accounting and reporting. However, with the demand for refined management of enterprises, more and more domestic enterprises attach importance to management accounting.