Implementing Management Accounting Procedures into Management Control System Procedures: Tool Coordination

Abstract

The article elaborates on current practices involved in the implementation of management accounting in the management control system at enterprise level, with outlining its prospective areas. The research theme is topical due to essential changes in the present-day enterprise management, resulting from economic recessions and complications in business processes, which requires modifications in the accounting & control system of the enterprise through integrating management accounting and management control. The need for installing and operating management accounting and management control systems using a standardized toolkit is emphasized, i.e. for a set of techniques and methods for obtaining, processing, adaptation and presentation of information supporting management decision-making, and for assessment of its implementation efficiency. A review of existing management accounting procedures demonstrated that they were not designed to meet information needs of the management control system. As this system is designed to assure the financial resilience and enhance the overall business performance (e.g. through mobilizing the available resources), its operation involves non-stop monitoring of principal production and economic processes. The essence of the management control system and subject-object relations intrinsic in it were outlined; five main components of the management control were determined, each one designed to achieve specific purpose and solve the tasks specific to its profile. The most effective control procedures of the management accounting and the management control were outlined; their analysis revealed a certain extent of their duplication, which laid grounds for correlating the aforementioned procedures, to make their tools coordinated. This study allowed for formulating a set of basic principles which, if complied with, would ensure the inclusion of management accounting procedures in the management control system at enterprise level: the focus of management accounting and management control systems on business model specifics; the coverage of all the core business processes; the full-scale dimensional employment of the risk matrix reflecting the potential impact of a specific risk and business process on the financial reporting transparence; the priority of a preventive computerized form of accounting and control, designed to avoid misstatements in financial reporting; setting up technical and organizational details of the management accounting and control system in the local acts and regulations of the enterprise; regular monitoring of the both systems’ architectonics to the effect of their ageing relative to development of business model in the enterprise.