ABSTRACT
Management accounting is the provision of useful information to aid management in decision-making, planning, control, and problem solving. It comprises the aspects of accounting that focus on supporting an organization's managers in their day-to-day decision-making. Management accounting can be about more than providing financial data: some items of non-financial information can be critical to decision makers, particularly in the public sector. Management accounting has to be forward-looking because decisions can only be made in respect of future options, perhaps guided by historical information. A common practice would be the production of a management accounting package at the end of each month; all or some of the information might need to be reported more or less often. A top-down approach to budgeting is where senior management devise the budget with minimal consultation and impose it on the organization. Strategic and tactical management decisions might require less frequent information which is wide in scope and highly summarized.
