Accountancy or Finance?

I am currently a year student who is looking to attend a university starting for September 2017.

- Firstly, can someone please contribute on identifying the key differences between the two?

- Secondly, from my research I think I prefer finance a lot more along with banking but most universities offer only 'accounting & finance' together rather than 'finance' or 'banking and finance' courses. So if anybody knows of universities which offer some close variation of the latter two and excludes accountancy (to an extent) can they please say their piece.

Many thanks.

Reply 1

Alexcm1987

1

The way I perceive:

Accounting: Looking at the past analysing the information
Finance: Looking forward to the future analysing inversion

Reply 2

aliman65

15

Original post by ThatGuyJosh

I am currently a year student who is looking to attend a university starting for September 2017.

- Firstly, can someone please contribute on identifying the key differences between the two?

- Secondly, from my research I think I prefer finance a lot more along with banking but most universities offer only 'accounting & finance' together rather than 'finance' or 'banking and finance' courses. So if anybody knows of universities which offer some close variation of the latter two and excludes accountancy (to an extent) can they please say their piece.

Many thanks.

I actually study Accounting and Finance at university. Accountancy is focused on reporting financial information whereas finance is more to do with using the information to make investment decisions. Both are extremely important to understand as you kind of need one to understand the other fully.

Reply 3

GoingToBurst

16

Original post by aliman65

I actually study Accounting and Finance at university. Accountancy is focused on reporting financial information whereas finance is more to do with using the information to make investment decisions. Both are extremely important to understand as you kind of need one to understand the other fully.

I completely agree with this. Particularly the last point, which is why my university stopped offering single honours in accountancy and finance and now only offers them as a joint honours course. Accounting can be broken down into financial accounting and management accounting. Financial accounting involves looking at past information, financial reporting etc. Management accounting is all about looking to project future budgets etc. Finance is more to do with banking and investments. Things like understanding the choices of finance sources (for example: why does a company choose debt over equity and why do they choose a particular element of debt?), the gains and losses associated with mergers & acquisitions, how to determine whether financial instruments are under/overpriced, understanding financial markets etc. Personally, I much prefer the finance side of my degree as I find it a lot more interesting. However, the accounting side of my degree has taught me a lot more useful information in regards to understanding the world around me and the business news portrayed by the media. Long story short: study accounting and then roll your eyes at business news on mainstream media forevermore. I also think it will be rare to find a finance degree that completely excludes accounting. When my university offered single honours finance, first and second years were still required to sit accounting classes. Edit: The ****? Why can't put paragraphs into my posts anymore? This huge wall of text is not okay with me.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 4

Varunjain

7

In a way, both the fields are really important. There is a lot of overlap between concepts. You would need the other subject (at least an understanding at a basic level) to excel at the other.

Accountancy or Finance?

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