In the modern economy, accounting is not only a tool for processing financial and economic information, but also acts as an active subject of the implementation of the development strategy of an enterprise or company. That is why its modern tasks and principles differ most decisively from those that took place, for example, 20 years ago. Modern accounting performs a much larger number and much more substantial functions that turn it into a direct factor in the economic well-being of the enterprise.
Management accounting is a holistic system that includes the tasks and principles of management accounting, information and computing activities, procedures and resources through which the classical functions of financial management are carried out: calculation, generalization, accounting, analysis, control, forecasting and others.
The leading goal of such a system is the constant management of the enterprise balance sheet, its cash flows, resources, assets and other objects that make up the capital of the enterprise. The most important indicator of the effectiveness of the current model is its tasks, which are considered as the final result of accounting and analytical actions, and the principles of managerial accounting.
The tasks that management accounting solves are:
- research and identification of sources of risk in the work of an enterprise or institution;
- development, implementation and management of the pricing policy of the enterprise;
- joint (with marketing and other services) participation in the development of assortment policy;
- A professional and reliable assessment of the effectiveness of costs, investments, loans.
The second fundamental basis is the principles of accounting management accounting, which are the most significant general provisions and requirements for this type of activity.
Consider some of the principles of management accounting that determine today the economic efficiency of enterprises and companies.
The principle of reliability proceeds from the statement about the inadmissibility of the provision and operation of inaccurate and unverified data and information about the business activities of the enterprise.
The principle of materiality implies such an attitude to all the information with which analytical operations are performed, in which all of them are considered as objectively important and determining the nature of the managerial actions taken and the quality of the entire enterprise.
Principles of managerial accounting, such as prudence, imply the need to observe some caution in the analytical work with data and information, and especially when making forecasts of economic development.
The principle of the dominance of an entity over a form involves reflecting in the accounting all the phenomena and events of business activity, both in accordance with their legal significance, and based on their economic nature.
The principle of continuity implies such accounting that the fact of development of an enterprise or company in the future is accepted a priori.
The principle of the unity of measurement units and measurement procedures requires the use of unified methods and procedures for assessing the position of the enterprise. This approach provides comparability of results and the possibility of organizing continuous monitoring of it.
The principle of efficiency implies the need for a current assessment of the results of each site of work and the unit of the enterprise in order to timely identify trends in its development and take urgent measures to respond to these trends.
Such principles of managerial accounting as continuity and periodicity put forward the requirement to create such a system (model) of accounting that would allow it to be repeated many times in various types of economic activity and provide preventiveness in preparing for the next stages of accounting.