Users of Accounting Information - Explained
Who are the Users of Accounting Information?
Written by Jason Gordon
Updated at June 23rd, 2023
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Who are Users of Accounting Information?
Users of accounting information generally include:
- Investors (Shareholders)
- Creditors (Lenders)
- Government
- Consumer Groups
- External Auditors
- Customers
Internal and External Users of Accounting Information
When I say accounting information, I'm talking about really two types of accounting - financial and managerial accounting. So, let's look at who the end users and the differences between the two.
Accounting is really focused on external users. We typically claim those as investors or creditors - investors being the shareholders and creditors being lenders from banks and whatnot. You might also think of the Government as an external user of accounting information. Other external groups might include customers and external auditors.
Manager accounting or managerial accounting deals more with end users who are more internal users. We're going to provide this information to executives, managers, internal auditors, sales staffs, budget analysts, controllers, etc. People like that that are within the company themselves. So, that is a huge difference between financial accounting and managerial accounting.