Why do people say “Accounting people can do Finance, but Finance people can’t do Accounting.
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They’re very separate disciplines at the end of the day. Financial Accountant’s do occasionally need to prep ratios and some of that is in common with Finance and Finance draws from Accounting figures but there’s less common ground than what you would think. Btw Accounting and auditing is so boring that when you are studying you definitely need something else to keep you interested… and that doesn’t change when you get to the workplace.
If you’ve studied purely Accounting courses then you will have learnt how to do specific financial ratios. But the courses don’t teach you any decision making.
Finance is ultimately about taking data (from already prepared sources) and being able to make decisions. Although you need to understand what the summarized data means you don’t have to have any knowledge of how that data was prepared or what checks are in place in your accounting systems.
There is some overlap in the two fields in the form of Cost and Management Accounting. While Financial Accounting is regarded as backwards looking Cost and Management Accounting is current looking and then Finance is future looking.
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