Only Trends Matter

Book excerpt: Only Trends Matter A step change in management accounting This is not just a book for accountants; it is directed to all managers in all types of organization, commercial, public, charitable or social, that receive regular profit and loss or income and expenditure statements otherwise known as management accounts. They are the most ubiquitous financial report used in the world today. The author is not an academic and all managers, whatever their discipline should be able to relate to it. Although the author was originally a management accountant he spent the majority of his career in general management so has experienced management accounts from both perspectives. As a CEO he recognized that much time was being wasted at board meetings discussing history, prompted by the management accounts and this instigated his research to find a way of transforming management accounts into a modern day and invaluable management tool. There is a dearth of publications addressing the presentation and format of financial information despite the fact that unless it is comprehensible it is of little use as a management report. Some good managers admit that they find numerous columns of numbers difficult to understand and many dont admit it at all. It appears to be a subject that accountants give limited consideration to, and it is staggering that despite monumental changes in business technology the format and content of management accounts has changed little over 50 years or more. The book reveals that management accounts are commonly criticised by managers for being too little, too late to help them manage their day to day activities but criticism of management accounting techniques is not new, Johnson and Kaplan in their renowned book Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting, 1987, could not have phrased it better. Todays management accounting information, driven by the procedures and cycle of the organizations financial reporting system, is too late, too aggregated, and too distorted to be relevant for managers planning and control decisions.