Hello guys, is ICAN, CIMA & ACCA the same thing in the context of accounting mangement? Your candid opinion is welcome.

CIMA is management accounting while ICAN and ACCA are financial accounting. One is forward looking while the other reports the past. One is management focused and guarantees more C-Suite positions than the other. See independent analysis by Diffren...


Financial Accounting vs. Management Accounting

Management accounting is a field of accounting that analyzes and provides cost information to the internal management for the purposes of planning, controlling and decision making.

Management accounting refers to accounting information developed for managers within an organization. CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) defines Management accounting as “Management Accounting is the process of identification, measurement, accumulation, analysis, preparation, interpretation, and communication of information that used by management to plan, evaluate, and control within an entity and to assure appropriate use of an accountability for its resources”. This is the phase of accounting concerned with providing information to managers for use in planning and controlling operations and in decision making.

Managerial accounting is concerned with providing information to managers i.e. people inside an organization who direct and control its operations. In contrast, financial accounting is concerned with providing information to stockholders, creditors, and others who are outside an organization. Managerial accounting provides the essential data with which organizations are actually run. Financial accounting provides the scorecard by which a company’s past performance is judged.

Because it is manager oriented, any study of managerial accounting must be preceded by some understanding of what managers do, the information managers need, and the general business environment.

See web link for more info: http://www.diffen.com/difference/Financial_Accounting_vs_Management_Accounting