The accounting department is a cost center. It does not directly generate revenues, but rather provides a fixed set of services to the rest of a company, and is asked to do so at the lowest possible cost. Consequently, the accounting staff is called upon to process transactions, write reports, create new processes or investigate old ones—while doing so as an ever-shrinking proportion of total expenses. This cost-based environment is a very difficult one for most accountants, for their training is primarily in accounting rules and regulations, rather than in how to run a very specialized department in a cost-effective manner
