What is the difference between accounting and finance?

Accounting is completed actions. Finance involves present and future transactions.

Accounting is the tracking and reporting of the business as it occurs: bookkeeping, income statements, balance sheet.

Finance is the strategy to run the business and make decisions.

Finance people need to know how to read the work output of the accountants. A good accountant knows how to legally treat activity to make the company look better or to reduce tax liability.

Accounting is about double entry, finance is about affording it.

Finance is a broad term for all things money – strategy, growth, investment, etc. Accounting is keeping up with money going out and coming in.

Accounting is bookkeeping. Finance is running the company.

Finance is how you get the funds to run the business. Accounting is how to keep the IRS from taking all the profit!!!

Accounting = recordkeeping and a focus on the day-to-day flow of resources

Finance = control and custody of assets, for managing them and planning future resources

The two functions should never cross, although so many companies and institutions believe that they should. A business might want its accountant to have check-signing authority, the ability to transfer money in-and-out of a bank account, and the authority to buy and sell investments. For reasons that should be easy and obvious, no company should give one person the opportunities to control assets and cover his/her own tracks.