Thursday, May 15, 2008

Financial of accountancy

Financial accountancy (or financial accounting) is the field of accountancy concerned with the preparation of financial statements for decision makers, such as stockholders, suppliers, banks, employees, government agencies, owners, and other stakeholders. The fundamental need for financial accounting is to reduce principal-agent problem by measuring and monitoring agents' performance and reporting the results to interested users.
Financial accountancy is used to prepare accounting information for people outside the organization or not involved in the day to day running of the company. Managerial accounting provides accounting information to help managers make decisions to manage the business.
Financial accountancy is governed by both local and international accounting standards.
Basic accounting concepts:-
Financial accountants produce financial statements based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) of a respective country.
Financial accounting serves following purposes:
producing general purpose financial statements
provision of information used by management of a business entity for decision making, planning and performance evaluation
for meeting regulatory requirements
Meaning of the accounting equation:-
The value of a company can be understood simply as the useful assets that ownership of a company entitles one to claim. This value is known as Owners' Equity. Some assets of a company, however, cannot be claimed as equity by the owners of a company because other people have legal claim to them - for example if the company has borrowed money from the bank. The value of a resource claimable by a non-owner is called a liability. All of the Assets of a company can be claimed by someone, whether owner or not, so the sum of a company's equity and its liabilities must equal the value of its Assets. Thus the accounting equation describes what portion of a company's assets can be claimed by the owners.
Various account types are classified as 'credit' or 'debit' depending on the role they play in the accounting equation.
Assets = Liabilities + Equity or Assets - Liabilities - Equity = 0
Another way of stating it is:
Equity = Assets - Liabilities
which can be interpreted as: "Equity is what is left if all assets have been sold and all liabilities have been paid".
There are several related professional qualifications in the field of financial accountancy including:
Qualified Accountant qualifications (Chartered Certified Accountant(ACCA), Chartered Accountant (CA) and Certified Public Accountant (CPA))
CCA Chartered Cost Accountant (cost control) designation offered by the American Academy of Financial Management.
Accounting analyst:-
An accounting analyst evaluates and interprets public company financial statements. Public companies issue these (10-k) annual financial statements as required by the Security and Exchange Commission. The statements include the balance sheet, the income statement, the statement of cash flows and the notes to the financial statements. Specifically, the notes to the financial statements contain considerable quantitative detail supporting the financial statements along with narrative information.
This individual has extensive training in understanding financial accounting principles for public companies based on generally accepted accounting principles as provided by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Or, he/she may have additional experience in applying international accounting standards based on the rules put out by the International Accounting Standards Board.
As an example, the accounting analyst may work for a financial research company evaluating differing financial accounting principles and how they influence the company's reported wealth.
The accounting analyst will most likely hold a Masters Degree in Accounting MSAcc and will have specialized in the financial accounting area. Or, the analyst may have a MBA degree with an Accounting specialization.
In addition, the analyst may hold the Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA) or Certified Public Accountant (CPA) or Chartered Accountant (CA or ACA) designation.

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