DEFINITION OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

Financial management is an integral part of overall management. It is concerned with the
duties of the financial managers in the business firm.
The term financial management has been defined by Solomon, “It is concerned with
the efficient use of an important economic resource namely, capital funds”.
The most popular and acceptable definition of financial management as given by S.C.
Kuchal is that “Financial Management deals with procurement of funds and their effective
utilization in the business”.
Howard and Upton : Financial management “as an application of general managerial
principles to the area of financial decision-making.
Weston and Brigham : Financial management “is an area of financial decision-making,
harmonizing individual motives and enterprise goals”.
Joshep and Massie : Financial management “is the operational activity of a business
that is responsible for obtaining and effectively utilizing the funds necessary for efficient
operations.
Thus, Financial Management is mainly concerned with the effective funds
management in the business. In simple words, Financial Management as practiced by
business firms can be called as Corporation Finance or Business Finance.

Financial management is one of the important parts of overall management, which is directly
related with various functional departments like personnel, marketing and production.
Financial management covers wide area with multidimensional approaches. The following
are the important scope of financial management.

1. Financial Management and Economics
Economic concepts like micro and macroeconomics are directly applied with the
financial management approaches. Investment decisions, micro and macro
environmental factors are closely associated with the functions of financial manager.
Financial management also uses the economic equations like money value discount
factor, economic order quantity etc. Financial economics is one of the emerging
area, which provides immense opportunities to finance, and economical areas.

2. Financial Management and Accounting
Accounting records includes the financial information of the business concern.
Hence, we can easily understand the relationship between the financial management
and accounting. In the olden periods, both financial management and accounting
are treated as a same discipline and then it has been merged as Management
Accounting because this part is very much helpful to finance manager to take
decisions. But nowaday’s financial management and accounting discipline are
separate and interrelated.

3. Financial Management or Mathematics
Modern approaches of the financial management applied large number of
mathematical and statistical tools and techniques. They are also called as
econometrics. Economic order quantity, discount factor, time value of money,
present value of money, cost of capital, capital structure theories, dividend theories,
ratio analysis and working capital analysis are used as mathematical and statistical
tools and techniques in the field of financial management.

4. Financial Management and Production Management
Production management is the operational part of the business concern, which
helps to multiple the money into profit. Profit of the concern depends upon the
production performance. Production performance needs finance, because
production department requires raw material, machinery, wages, operating expenses
etc. These expenditures are decided and estimated by the financial department
and the finance manager allocates the appropriate finance to production department.
The financial manager must be aware of the operational process and finance
required for each process of production activities.

5. Financial Management and Marketing
Produced goods are sold in the market with innovative and modern approaches.
For this, the marketing department needs finance to meet their requirements
The financial manager or finance department is responsible to allocate the adequate
finance to the marketing department. Hence, marketing and financial management
are interrelated and depends on each other.

6. Financial Management and Human Resource
Financial management is also related with human resource department, which
provides manpower to all the functional areas of the management. Financial
manager should carefully evaluate the requirement of manpower to each
department and allocate the finance to the human resource department as wages,
salary, remuneration, commission, bonus, pension and other monetary benefits
to the human resource department. Hence, financial management is directly
related with human resource management.