Over the past decade, the substantial attention paid to financial modelling in the professional literature, with well over 100 articles in the two major journals Accountancy and Management Accounting, indicates that accountants’ interest in the subject has not diminished. However, this professional literature leaves key questions unanswered. The emphasis in the literature is not on the model-building process which is being adopted, nor on applications, but on software packages and their facilities. Therefore, in order to discover which modelling activities are currently being undertaken by accounting professionals, the authors conducted a postal survey of accounting firms in the East Anglian region. Questionnaires were sent to the senior partner and to persons using a computer in each accounting practice. They followed up the survey exercise with a series of indepth interviews with model-building accountants.
