Financial Account vs Cost Account
Financial Account:
- Focuses on recording and reporting financial transactions of a business.
- Provides information to external stakeholders such as investors, creditors, and regulatory authorities.
- Follows generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to prepare financial statements like the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.
- Helps in evaluating the overall financial performance and position of the business.
- Includes transactions related to revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities, and equity.

Cost Account:
- Focuses on collecting, analyzing, and reporting information related to the costs incurred by a business.
- Provides information to internal stakeholders such as management for decision-making purposes.
- Uses various costing techniques like job costing, process costing, and activity-based costing to allocate costs to products, services, or departments.
- Helps in determining the cost of production, setting prices, budgeting, and performance evaluation.
- Includes costs such as direct materials, direct labor, overhead, and other manufacturing costs.

Key Differences:
1. Purpose: Financial accounting focuses on external reporting, while cost accounting focuses on internal decision-making.
2. Users: Financial accounting is for external stakeholders, while cost accounting is for internal management.
3. Regulations: Financial accounting follows GAAP, while cost accounting is more flexible in its methods.
4. Focus: Financial accounting focuses on the overall financial performance, while cost accounting focuses on the costs of production.
5. Content: Financial accounting includes all financial transactions, while cost accounting focuses on costs related to production.