ftwcfa

Here's my take:

Accounting is more done from the "front end" of the process - how do they record the transactions of the company and prepare statements according to GAAP.

The CFA body of knowledge requires that you be able to ANALYZE these statements to convert them into something that reflected the real, economic priospects of the company in question. So, in some sense you are translating them into "finance-exe".

Lease accounting and pension accounting are good examples - a finance person is concerned with the amount of debt and other fixed obligations carried by a firm. Because of the quirks of the accounting system, the financial statements don't always label what we'd consider debt (e.g. an operating lease) as "debt". So, we translate. But in order to translate, we need to know how the statements are constructed.

The best background is to have both accounting and finance. One constructs the statements, and one uses them.

kasinkei

True that FRA is geared more toward analyzing and interpreting financial statements from the CFA perspective. However, as CPA, I can tell you that about 90% of the material in FRA is required knowledge for becoming a CPA.



investragy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here is my 2 cents:
>
> FSA is not accounting period! Accountants prepare
> financial statements.... FSA is about analyzing
> financial statements.
>
> Just my POV!

- Robert