What ACCA Paper F5 Means For The Future Of Accounting

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants has an ambition to address issues that are critical to the accounting profession of today and tomorrow. They have developed an "Accountancy Futures" programme, which by undertaking research, stimulating comment and staging events, the organisation wishes to positively influence the future agenda for finance professionals, business and society.

There are four main areas they strives to excel in, they are; access to finance, audit and society, carbon accounting and narrative reporting. In respect of the latter, it is hoped that by looking at the simplification of reporting generally, the usefulness of narrative reporting and new developments in business forecasting it can stimulate debate and improve the value of narrative reports for stakeholders in terms of their decision-usefulness, reliability, comparability and relevance.

This has become extremely difficult though as business continues to grow and evolve at a rapid speed. As a result, this new business environment presents fresh challenges for an accountancy profession that wishes to remain the lingua franca of commerce and demands new approaches to the dynamic economic, political and environmental climate of the 21st century.

They often refer to accounting as the "language of business" and provide the framework of concepts, such as performance measurement, practice, regulation and governance through and within which, the corporate world can operate effectively and successfully.

They are recognised as the largest and fastest-growing global professional accountancy body in the world, and widely respected the world over for their forward thinking ideas. It has close on 140,000 members and 404,000 students in 170 countries with a key aim to deliver business relevant, qualifications and professional development. Many of the concepts touched on in the "Accountancy Futures" programme are central to the Performance Management Accounting, paper F5 of the organisations gold standard, accounting qualification.

For the ACCA, qualification is essential in becoming a great accountant, and they provide an academic course to reflect this. Nine of the papers are regarded as "Fundamental" and five, more advanced topics, are termed "Professional" papers. F5 covers in some depth, practical concepts such specialist cost and management accounting techniques such as target costing, This last area concentrates mainly on interpreting financial data and is closely tied in with reporting and how best to use performance information to add value to businesses and make sound decisions.

They also have also reflected on the correlation between Corporate Social Responsibility and cost control. Part of the "Accountancy Futures"campaign believes that good practices in key issues such as environmental will actually reflect on financial prosperity. This link is the way in which businesses report activity. Narrative reporting enables businesses to measure and articulate their environmental, social and sustainability agendas. These areas are at the heart of the constantly changing business landscape and it is only those businesses with the human capital qualified to respond to such change that will survive and prosper.