Final answer:
Financial accounting is the branch that prepares financial statements for external stakeholders. Managerial accounting is for internal management, while cost accounting deals with the control of process costs. GAAP sets the standards for financial reporting.
Step-by-step explanation:
The branch of accounting that provides general-purpose financial statements or reports to aid many decision-making groups, internal and external to the organization, in making a variety of decisions is A. Financial accounting. This area of accounting focuses on preparing financial documents for stakeholders outside the company, such as investors, creditors, and tax authorities. Contrastingly, B. Managerial accounting is about providing detailed financial and non-financial information to an organization's management for internal decision-making. C. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles are not a branch of accounting but a set of rules that govern financial accounting and reporting in the U.S. Meanwhile, D. Cost accounting is a process of recording, classifying, analyzing, summarizing, and allocating costs associated with a process, and then developing various courses of action to control the costs.
Privately owned firms are motivated to earn profits, which is the difference between revenues and costs. Accounting profit considers only explicit costs, whereas economic profit considers both explicit and implicit costs, which are essential for accurate financial planning and investment.