The accounts department carries out several different tasks and activities with the aim
of keeping accurate records of the company’s operations in monetary terms. It has to
keep records of all the business operations which is used to prepare the statutory
financial statements, which will be made up of the statement of profit or loss and the
statement of financial position. These help to assess the profitability, liquidity and
sustainability of an organisation.

It has to keep track of all sales, expenses, payments, receipts and activities which affect
the company’s financial performance and these have to be reported through different
reports and documents to different stakeholders, both internal and external
stakeholders.

The accounts department does not work in isolation within an organisation; it provides a
vital support role to the sales, production, HR and various other departments of the
business. This can take the form of supplying information that shows the financial
implications of the different departments’ activities, including the employment of staff
and with the vital information provided the decision making process is enhanced and
this support the success of the organisation.

The accounts or finance department could be made up of the following functions within
any organisation:

• Sales ledger function- deals with customers invoices and credit notes
• Purchases ledger function- deals with suppliers invoices and credit notes
• Credit control function- deals with chasing customers for payments
• Payroll function- deals with processing wages and filing RTI returns to HMRC
• Stock control function- deals with inventory management and ordering materials
• Costing and management accounting function- deals with budgets and variances
• Bookkeeping and financial accounting function- deals with record keeping to
  prepare accounts
• Cash receipts and payments function; including petty cash and bank transactions

The accounts department does not work in isolation, it relates with all the other
departments in the organisation, so it is vital to maintain good communication skills and
good team playing skills with other members of staff. Financial and non-financial
information is always communicated from the accounts department to other
departments and from other departments to the accounts department.

The accounts department gets information on the activities of all the organisation’s
departments, and records them in financial terms. Some of the types of information they
will need to receive could include:

• Schedules of production (used to for budgets)
• Raw Material Costs (used for budgets and costings)
• Employee Timesheets (used to set up periodic payroll)
• New customer details (used to carry out credit checks and set up accounts)
• Customer sales orders (used to set up sales invoices and delivery notes)
• Purchase orders (used to monitor or reconcile purchase invoices)

Some examples of types of information supplied by the accounting department could
include:

• Budgets
• Variance reports
• Income statements
• Expense Analysis
• Profitability reports
• Payslips, P60’s, P45’s
• Credit check reports on new customers
• Debtors and Creditors Reports
• Petty cash reports
• Cost Analysis

In larger companies, it is easily possible for these functions to be maintained by
different teams of people but in smaller companies, it is possible for a single team to be
responsible for more than one function in the business. With the use of technology, it is
now easier different operations and functions to be interconnected and carried out by
single teams, eg the sales and distribution teams can be a single team where the sales
and the distribution of the sold items are co-ordinated in the same team.

Some accounting and other departmental functions may be outsourced to specialist
organisations and may not be done by employees of the company. This could include
accounting functions such as payroll, marketing, distribution etc. This will mean that an
external supplier or organisation could be carrying out such tasks on behalf of another
organisation and payments will be made to such external organisation for their services.