The production of audited financial statements is a goal of accountants and one
of the many roles they possess. Some are of the opinion that accountants are
best served focusing on the financial statements and letting the design of
managerial reports being left to information systems specialists. While
accountants do learn the skills to produce the financial statements, they should
not be limited to just this as I do not see a wide variety of advantages for
accountants to only focus on this. At my current firm, employees ranging from
staff to seniors to partners have a great range of skills that extend from
producing financial statements to producing managerial reports. It would be a
disservice to their skillset to limit it in this way. An advantage of producing
managerial reports is having an ability to communicate the reports to managers
and "accountants can perform a valuable service by improving their
communication skills with non-accounting managers" (Tracy, 2016). Another
advantage is being able to tie managerial reports to the financial information
that accountants possess the skills to produce. As an accountant, it would
certainly make you more valuable to the firm if you can produce a wider
variety of information. However, a disadvantage may be that if accountants
solely produced the managerial reports, then the communication between
information systems specialists may suffer. This is not a guarantee, however
for increased efficiency it would be important for the communication from
both parties to be at its best.
References:
Tracy, J. (2016, March 26). Designing Internal Accounting Reports for
Business Managers . Retrieved November 17, 2022, from
https://www.dummies.com/business/operations-management/designing-
internal-accounting-reports-for-business-managers/
