Financial Accounting Essay -- Business and Management Studies:

Financial Accounting Financial accounting or ‘book-keeping’ is the process of recording financial transactions from the day-to-day operation of a business. The sale of goods to a customer and the subsequent settlement of the debt are two examples of financial transactions. Sales Accounting When credit sales are made to customers, a record needs to be kept of amounts owing and paid. Payment is normally requested with an invoice. An invoice usually gives details of goods supplied, quantities, prices and VAT. Credit sales are usually made on weekly a basis, which means that the customer has to pay within that period to obtain the discounts, if any offered. Overdue payments need to be chased, so sales accounting systems normally produce reports analysing the indebtedness of different customers. Debt control is vital to business profitability and computerised systems can produce prompt and up-to-date reports as a by-product of the main application. Human Resources --------------- The human resources (personnel) function is responsible for the selection (usually by interview), recruitment, training and development of staff. Personnel records on employees will store all the information needed by Salaries and Wages to make the correct payments to employees; this will include details of, for example, gross salary, tax code, statutory sick pay and holiday entitlement. Depending on the size of the organisation, information may also be held concerning: qualifications, courses attended; and career development plans. Design ------ The design function is present where an organisation develops its own products and services; a trader who simply buys and sells goods has no need of a design team unless designing logo’s etc which maybe carried out by another firm. Design is part of the research and development (R&D) function, which is vital to organisations wishing to radically develop their product range. The nature of design teams depends on the product or service being designed. The skills and talents of a car design team are clearly very different from those of a team designing a cover for a magazine. Production Markets for a business’s products should ideally, drive the production function. In other words, it should be geared to produce the necessary mix and quantities of products required by customers. If goods ar... ...ons need specialist staff to develop, introduce, maintain and update the various systems that make use of information technology. The responsibilities of ICT Services are much broader than those traditional held by wholly centralised computer services or data processing departments because communication is a larger part of IT with the introduction of the internet and E-mail amongst other things.. The development of cheaper and more powerful microcomputer systems has resulted in computer facilities being distributed more widely. For this reason, ICT Services needs to provide a much more flexible service and support user systems at the point of use. For example, uses of network workstations need support when equipment, such as a shared printer, breaks down or they may require help in the use of software on the network. This contrasts with a centralised department, which holds all the computer equipment, carries out all computer processing and restricts user access to specialised applications, run through dedicated terminals. ICT Services may be known variously as Computer Services, Management Information Services or less commonly now, the Data Processing Department.