This paper aims to explore what performance management tools are implemented in practice in Spanish local governments and whether they have led to an improvement in public management and accountability. We also analyse the usefulness of performance reporting, comparing it with that of accrual financial reporting. The results show that most of the entities that have introduced performance indicators do not use them for decision‐making or accountability. After two decades of reforms in financial and management systems, financial directors still consider that budgetary reporting is the most useful, basically because the control of expenditure is still based on the budget.