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Accounting has many aspects to the work area. For large corporations the accountant will not be able to do all the work him or herself. The amount of transaction processing and calculating figures and monthly returns would prove to be too much for almost every accountant.

The field of accounting is broken up into transactional processing usually done on an accounting software package in practise. The invoices sent to the customers with the dates and amounts recorded. Each invoice is posted against a customers account. The company has also to collect money from debtors. The business processes of any business are recorded in accounts. So whether you buy or sell millions of items they all have to be recorded. The same idea goes for the expenses of the water and electricity bills of a company.

Accounting has its legal obligation to pay the taxman a x% business tax. Also where there is value added tax due or owed the accounting has to be accurately entered and the final totals calculated correctly. Overstating or understating numbers is illegal and punishments can be enforced upon discovery of irregularities. Such is the scope and size of accounting in that not only does it focus on the financial side of numbers.

Management accounting also looks at numbers to do with the project costings. A business owner might have a idea to invest in a construction of a hotel costing $2 million. From this point the management accountants job would be to allocate the costs of each major and specific duty in the construction of a project. This will take into account the wages, labour, transportation costs. From each summary heading the costs are apportioned to the relevant area, and the price charged for the hotel room can be made accordingly thereafter. Every business needs a profit mark up, and it will be a management accountants job to investigate a monthly trend in different records i.e month by month comparisons, year on year trends. Project analysis by price per room charged, occupancy rates. Though the difference between a financial accountant and a management accountant is that a management accountant investigates the internal decision making. There is no legal obligation for a company to have a management accountant, other than to provide a scope and emphasis on making better accounting decisions.

In financial accounting the work will be carried out by a sales ledger team, a credit controller, and a purchase ledger assistant or manager. The work as a whole will be supervised and managed by the financial accountant. The management accountant may work alone or as part of a small team. The difference being in staff numbers the financial accounting staff will be higher than a small board of directors who tend to do this task.

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