text: Chapter 5
  Accounting Support and Cost Management
  The financial manager’s role is critical to meeting the expectations of Congress, the
  public, and the Army in demonstrating effectiveness and efficiency in the application
  of resources necessary to conduct military operations in pursuit of national security.
  The Army relies on the FM community to ensure fiscal stewardship of the public
  funds entrusted to execute its assigned missions. Financial managers meet this
  expectation by providing expert fiscal analysis based on accurate financial data.
  DFAS Regulation 37-1 defines “accounting” as the act of receiving, controlling,
  validating, recording, classifying, and summarizing transactions in terms of money,
  analyzing and interpreting those transactions, and reporting the operating results and
  related resource management information to higher headquarters. The financial
  manager must know that this simple definition is not all inclusive of the varied types
  of accounting practiced within the accounting domain and the FM core competency,
  accounting support and cost management.
  The DFAS regulation goes on to define other types of accounting pertinent to FM
  such as budgetary accounting, proprietary, and managerial cost accounting.
  Budgetary accounting is the accounting necessary to support and control the budget
  execution process as distinguished from that required to report on financial
  conditions and operations (proprietary accounting). For example, this includes
  commitments, obligations, expenditures, and conditions such as appropriations
  realized, contract authority, anticipated reimbursements, and so forth. In contrast to
  budgetary accounting, proprietary accounting involves those accounting functions
  and operations necessary to report on financial conditions and financial results of an
  activity’s operations. Proprietary accounting may include accounting for inventory,
  accounts receivable, accounts payable, and accrued expenditures. Finally, managerial
  cost accounting is the process of accumulating, measuring, analyzing, interpreting,
  and reporting cost information useful to both internal and external groups concerned
  with the way in which the organization uses, accounts for, safeguards, and controls its
  resources to meet its objectives. Accounting support entails execution of all three
  types of accounting in the provision of theater FM support to unified land operations.
  Details on the particular procedures and processes related to federal budgetary,
  proprietary, and managerial cost accounting are described in DODFMRs, DFAS-IN
  Regulation 37-1, and published Statement of Federal Financial Accounting
  Standards.
  Accounting support necessitates establishing financial control, from time of
  acquisition to time of disposal, over all assets provided to or acquired by the Army in
  support of Army missions. Additionally, accounting support provides the requisite
  information to financial managers and decision makers at all levels of the Army -
  strategic to tactical. Accounting support reinforces internal control over the U.S.
  government’s funds, collections, expenditures, property and other assets.