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. Financial capital maintenance can be measured in either nominal monetary units or units of constant purchasing power. 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. Management accounting provides accounting information to help managers make decisions to manage the business.
In short, financial accounting is the process of summarizing financial data taken from an organization's accounting records and publishing in the form of annual (or more frequent) reports for the benefit of people outside the organization.
Financial accountancy is governed by both local and international accounting standards.
Read more about Financial Accountancy: Basic Accounting Concepts, Graphic Definition, Related Qualification
Famous quotes containing the word financial:
“A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of gov’t as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by gov’t. Somewhere in between and in gradations is the group that has the sense that gov’t exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)