Managament accounting

Operational information is used by 'front-line' managers such as foremen or head clerks to ensure that specific tasks are planned and carried out properly within a factory or office and so on. In the payroll office, for example, information at this level will relate to day-rate labour and will include the hours worked each week by each employee, the rate of pay per hour, details of the deductions and, for the purpose of wages analysis, details of the time each person spent on individual jobs during the week. In this example, the information is required weekly, but more urgent operational information, such as the amount of raw materials being input to a production process, may be required daily, hourly or, in the case of automated production, second by second.

Operational information has the following features.  It is derived almost entirely from internal sources.  It is highly detailed, being the processing of raw data.  It relates to the immediate term, and is prepared constantly, or very frequently.  It is task-specific and largely quantitative.