Financial accounting focuses on recording past monetary transactions to prepare financial statements like the balance sheet and income statement for external users based on generally accepted accounting principles. Cost and management accounting focuses on determining the cost of projects, processes, and items for internal decision making, and provides flexible and timely information for decisions about products, pricing, financing costs of production, and production capacity. While financial accounting emphasizes objectivity and verifiability of summarized past information, cost and management accounting emphasizes relevance and flexibility of detailed current and future information.