ACC M118 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Management Accounting
Document Summary
The work of management and the planning and control cycle. While it is clearly a simplification, the work of managers can be usefully classified into three major categories: planning, directing and motivating, and controlling. Planning consists of strategic planning and developing more detailed short-term plans. Most of what we refer to below is with reference to the more detailed short-term plans. Directing and motivating involves mobilizing people to implement the plan. Control is concerned with ensuring that the plan is followed. Emphasize that the accounting function plays a major role in the control phase. Accountants maintain the databases and prepare the reports that provide feedback to managers. The feedback can be used to reward particularly successful em-ployees, but more importantly the feedback can be used to identify potential problems and opportuni-ties that were not anticipated in the plan. Based on feedback, it may be desirable to modify the plan.
