What is the difference between finance and accounts?

Finance deals with valuation, capital structure, investments, project evaluation etc. Accounts deals with book keeping, preparing ledgers, trial balance and final accounts in accordance with accounting standards. Accounts is a process done through computerised packages whereas finance largely involves working on spreadsheets and power point presentations. read less

Most of my friends have very well defined accounts and finance. Let me give very simple example: Say Company A makes 1 crore profit and Company B make 10 crore profit. This profit results are given by accounting rules. Now if i ask u to choose which company looks good to u. Primafacie you may say Company B looks more good. But if you further analyse and ask the question on how much sale or assets was this profit generated. let say company A created 1 crore profit on 10 cr sale which is 10% profit. Whereas company B created10 cr profit on 1000cr sale which means 1% profit. so now your decision changes. Company A looks good. we are analyzing the company using ratio analysis. Like this in finance we have various techniques to interpret,analyze and make decision. Accounts uses accounting rules and generates statements like profit and loss account, balance sheet,cash flow statement. Finance applies various techniques like ratio(as above) to make decision. read less

Finance usually deals with management of funds, cash flows, treasury, budgets, ratios analysis, investments etc whereas accounts deals with bookkeeping i.e. preparation and maintenance of books of accounts starting from journal entries to finalization of accounts in the form of a profit and loss account and balance sheet. read less

The main difference between accounting and finance concerns time. Time plays a more sophisticated role in finance than in accounting Accounting is an essential part of finance. It is a sub-function of finance. Accounting produces information about the operations of a business. Accounting is a set of techniques to record, organise and present in a useful manner monetary information about the activity of the firm. read less