Chapter 6 - The finance function and financial information Flashcards
What is the finance function?
Recording financial transaction
What are the three types of way to record financial transactions
- Financial reporting (external)
- Management accounting (internal)
- Treasury management (internal)
What is the task of finance function for recording financial transaction
- Books of prime entry
- Ledgers
- Reconciliations
What is the task of finance function for management accounts
- Costing
- Budgeting
- Pricing decisions
- Investment appraisal
- Performance measurement
What is the task of finance function for financial reporting
- Financial statements
- Tax
- Regulatory information
What is the task of finance function for Treasury management
- Cash, working capital and foreign exchange management
- Managing financial risks
- Raising short, medium and long-term finance
What is business partnering?
Sees members of the finance function partnering within functional areas of the business in a value adding capacity.
What other business functions
- Marketing: Understanding revenue drivers, analysing sales volumes and mix and advising on pricing decision
- IT: KPI monitoring such as system downtime, service desk response times and internal customer satisfaction
- Procurement: Assessing supplier performance against service level agreement, deliveries on time and monitoring prices across the market.
- Operations: Production efficiency, levels of waste and rejected units, machine downtime and traditional variance analysis.
Who are the users of financial information?
Managers, production supervisors, material buyers, machinists (internal)
shareholders, financiers, customers, supplier government (external)
What purpose does the financial information serve to what people
- Planning
- Production manager: future production level
- Buyer: sourcing material
- HR: labour requirement
- Shareholder: increase shareholding? - Controlling
- Managing director - actual market share
- Distribution manager - actual costs versus standards
- Government: how much tax should entity be paying? - Recording transaction?
- Accountant: ledger accounting
- Sales ledger clerk - customer balances - Performance measurement
- Board of directors - how is division performing vs expectation?
- Shareholders? - performance vs share price? - Decision making
- Buyer: sources from supplier A or B
- Project team - invest in machine X or Y?
- Customer: do we want to commit to business for foreseeable future
What are the three levels organisations are split into
- Strategic
- Tactical
- Operational
What is effective information processing?
CATIVA mnemonic can be used to remember the issues related to effective processing of data into information.
CATIVA is an effective way to process information, what does it mean
- Completeness: all relevant data is processed
- Accurate: all processing ensures data remains true to source and error free
- Timeliness: processing matches data availability
- Inalterability: Data cannot be tampered with by unauthorised persons
- Verifiability: clear ‘audit trail’ from data source to information
- Assessability: information produces can be challenged, ensuring quality of systems.
What are transaction processing system?
Transaction processing systems (TPS) are systems which perform and record routine transaction
What are examples of transactions processing systems
- Finance/accounting systems: sale and purchase ledgers, budgets, nominal ledger, management account
- HR systems: payroll, personnel files, training records
- Manufacturing/production systems: Purchasing, orders, production schedules, stock control, quality records
- Sales/marketing systems: marketing research, pricing records, sales, management records
What are management information systems (MIS)
Systems to produce information allowing managers to make effective decisions
What is ACIANA for data security?
- Availability: information can be readily accessed at all time
- Confidentiality: information only accessed by those with a right to access
- Integrity: data remains unadulterated
- Authenticity: data/information comes from bona fide sources
- Non-repudiation: users trust the information produced and the system producing it
- Authorisation: systems changes only made by staff who are accountable for those changes.