Advanced Management Accounting cheat sheet

Strategic management accounting information

• Strategic management accounting adds the competitive and market context to internal cost data, to inform long-term strategy and monitor its execution, not just short-run operational control.
• Its sources reach beyond the entity's own accounting and operational systems to competitor and industry data, customer and market intelligence, and economic and regulatory data.
• Strategically sensitive information needs governance: controlled access, quality assurance over its data sources, and clear accountability for its accuracy and use.
• Management accounting informs judgement but never replaces it: its figures rest on estimates and assumptions that can be wrong, and non-quantifiable factors need separate consideration.
• Management accounting information is rarely verified by an outside party, so the accountant's own ethical standard is the main safeguard against manipulation.