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What's the difference between a finance major and an accounting major?

What is the actual difference between accounting and finance?

  • Can we draw a clear line between them? These fields are frequently mixed up; even professionals in the fields cannot explain the difference. Accounting people, finance department heads, and finance people generally are seen as serving as accountants in companies. Then why are there separate qualifications for both? Or are they one and the same the thing and their is no difference?

  • Answer:

    In a nutshell accounting professionals spend their time looking backwards in time (auditing, tax preparation, financial reporting) while finance professionals look forward (deal analysis and brokering).  Professional accountants such as CPAs are required to obtain significant hours of related undergraduate schooling and apprenticeship AND pass a rigorous standard exam.  Not so for finance professionals.  It's just harder to obtain an accounting certification than an MBA (and I have both).  The line is blurring between the professions because companies want the technical expertise of an accountant and the forward thinking of a finance person. I recommend the accounting route if you seek steadier employment over your lifetime.

Scott Vyduna at Quora Visit the source

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Accounting is basically the process of creating and maintaining financial statements that record the day to day transactions of a business. Finance involves studying the cash flow and market of a business.Managing assets and liabilities, how a business plans to use its money and its investment portfolio is all a part of finance. As such, accounting is a part of finance and a financial analyst has to   have accounting knowledge. Source: http://www.gracekennedyfinancialgroup.com

Sham Cron

accounting is about maintaining records and reporting on history. They are historians. Finance is about decisions for the future

Moishe

In very simple terms finance is overall arrangement and utiliAtion do funds whereas accounting is keeping track of where the funds came from and where it was spent.

Mangesh Chaudhari

Finance answers how to raise fund and how to use the same JUDICIOUSLY. Accounting answers how to keep a track on the same.

Saurabh Nair

Accounting focuses on profit but Finance focuses on Cash flow Accounting does not take into account risk but finance does

Shahriar Rana

"Finance and accounting are two halves of the financial book. Perhaps the simplest way to differentiate the two is that accounting is more focused on the past and finance is more focused on the future.

Ashish Bahukhandi

Much can be written.... essentially... Accounting- recording and summarising every transaction of an entity that can be measured in value. Finance - deals with  money and primarily cash flow management of the entity.

Suseelendra Rao Karnam

accounting is an art , rather a methodology of recording and maintaining all those transactions that have a monetary value associated to it . accounting can be summed as being part of the financial sphere. We interpret the data from accounting to use for financial decision making. For ex. after we record transactions and summarise it into the Profit and loss a/c and The Balance sheet , only then can we interpret the results from it and make further decisions on investments , dividends and other related things. Hope this was clear !

Nimmy Rose Jacob

Accounting: Prepares the account records Analyze, interpret and measure financial statements Performs day to day monitoring options The number of tools required comprises of profit and loss ledgers, balance sheets, cash flow statements, positional declaration and much more Finance Fixes the efficient and productive management of assets Comes up with proper credit levels, cash holding, financial strategy and controlling of cash flow Gets the efficient future performance to your business Tool comprises of performance reports, risk analysis, ratio analysis, returns on investments etc Manager,http://www.invoicera.com

Abram Malik

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