Duncan Williamson Introduction to Management Accounting Commercial Web Site manacc.duncanwil.co.uk/index.htm

Duncan WILLIAMSON

Home	Introduction to Management Accounting Duncan Williamson Introduction This chapter and all of those that follow will prove that management accounting is everywhere. Everywhere we go and everywhere we look we can find evidence that the management accountant got there first … or ought to have! Just take a look around the room you're in at the moment: your office, your bedroom or your kitchen and you will see furniture, electronic equipment, clothes. Take a look outside and you'll see cars, street lights, pavements. When you watch the television, there's a good chance you'll see some advertisements for products and services that the advertisers would like us to spend our hard earned cash on: holidays, loans, food … So it goes on: all of these products and services have benefited from the influence of the management accountant at some stage. It is the management accountant's job to take the costs, inputs and processes associated with products and services and organise them in such a way that we know the costs per unit to make them, the labour hours per unit taken to provide them, the number of vehicles needed to distribute them. The management accountant can work on any product or service in any organisation anywhere in the world. Whether an organisation calls its accountant a management accountant, a financial accountant or just an accountant doesn't matter. If an organisation needs to calculate costs per unit; the cost of goods and materials in stock; and evaluating productivities and efficiencies, it needs someone to do the work of a management accountant. At this stage we can draw our first conclusion: Management Accountants are Indispensable! It's true: if an organisation needs to know costs per unit and all of the other things we've talked about so far, it needs management accountancy work to be done … whether we call it management accounting or not. Let's move on to the definitions of management accounting now. Next Simple Definition of Management Accounting The eShop is now open: Duncan Williamson 3 March 2003