Question

Contrast financial and managerial accounting on the basis of user orientation, purpose of information, level of aggregation, length of time period, orientation toward past or future, conformance to external standards, and emphasis on objective data

Answer 1

	Financial Accounting	Managerial Accounting
Meaning	Financial Accounting focuses on preparation of financial statement s which provide information to interested parties	Management accounting focuses on information relevent to managers to help them form policies, procedures, strategiesin order to run the business
User Orientation	Financial Accounting means preparation of financial statements. The users are both internal and external parties to an organisation	Users of reports and information under Management Accounting is internal
Purpose of Information	Financial Accounting provides monetary information	Management accounting provides both monetary and non monetary
Level of Aggregation	Financial Accounting aggregates reports on the entire organisation	Management Accounting aggregrates reports on a detailed sucha as products, customers, locations,etc
Length of Time Period	Financial Accounting reports information about the past. It reports historical data. Also it reported for an accouting period which is normally a period of 12 months.	Management Accounting also create budgets and forecasts. It deals in historical data as well as future data. The frequency of the reports might be daiy, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, half-yearly or yearly. It can be also for more than one year.
Orientation towards Past or Future	As discussed above, financial accounting deals in historical data. Hence its orientation is towards past	Managerial data has orietation towards past as well as future.
Conformance to external standards	Compliance is required to various standards under financial accounting	Managerial accounting does not have to comply to accounting standards
Emphasis of Objective Data	Emphasis is more on Objective data	Data might be objective and subjective