Management Accounts: How to Use Them to Control Your Business

If you understand your management accounts, you understand your business. This book explains management accounts in such a way that every manager should be able to not only understand, but critique, develop and take appropriate action on information they receive on the financial position of their organization. The book is a guide to management accounts written from the perspective of the user. It explains the jargon, identifies what is important and what is irrelevant and points out the information you should be getting. The emphasis throughout the book is on applying the information. For instance, the book: shows how individual decisions affect the profitability, cash flow and risk profile of the business; demonstrates how to develop the areas of ratio analysis and the use of spreadsheets; indicates how to develop the action required to address the differences between expected and actual achievements; suggests a variety of spreadsheet applications using numbers and graphs and provides two "magic" formulae for calculating break-even and profit; and illustrates the control mechanisms available including budgetary control and the control of working capital. It also explains the use of the "financial score card".