IMA outlines entry-level skills for accountants

The Institute of Management Accountants released a report describing the essential competencies it sees as necessary for all entry-level accountants.

In the report, the IMA is urging colleges and universities to require two distinct management accounting courses — introductory and intermediate — for all accounting students. The report was developed by the IMA’s Management Accounting Competency Task Force, a team of professionals and academics with extensive experience developing curricula.

The IMA has long offered a Management Accounting Competency Framework in which it has been increasingly emphasizing technology skills in areas such as data analytics, management information systems, data governance and technology-enabled finance transformation. The new recommendations come in response to the CPA Evolution initiative that’s being spearheaded by the American Institute of CPAs and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, who are also calling for more technology skills for CPAs and for changes in testing on the Uniform CPA Exam.

“Skill sets that were sufficient in the past are no longer adequate for meeting the needs of today’s professional accountant,” said IMA Research Foundation Committee chair Raef Lawson in a statement. “Schools need to reassess what is being taught in their programs regarding management accounting given the significant changes currently occurring in practice.”

The task force that Lawson chairs is calling for entry-level accountants to learn skills in other areas besides technology, such as strategic and tactical planning, decision analysis, budgeting and forecasting, performance management, revenue management, managerial costing, profitability management, personal ethics and organizational ethics.

The report also calls for accounting students to be taught by management accounting specialists who are subject matter experts. “It is imperative that entry-level accountants in all parts of the profession have the management accounting competencies to meet the needs of business and society in an environment that is increasingly complex and uncertain,” said Roopa Venkatesh, chair of the IMA’s Committee on Academic Relations, in a statement. “In this digital age, competencies in decision support, data modeling, financial planning and analysis, performance management, including non-financial measures, and more, is necessary to drive the business forward.”

The IMA report contends that while other business fields use management accounting information, some essential topics are learned only in management accounting courses, including budgeting theory and application, costing and allocation techniques, profitability analyses of organizational segments, responsibility center management, activity-based costing and management. Even if the topics are included in another business course, the importance of the topic may not be stressed enough.