Accounting

Accounting or accountancy is the job of sharing financial information about a business to managers and shareholders or owners.^[1] Accounting is often called the "language of business". Accountants are people who do accounting, and also carry out the auditing or checking of a company's books and records. In Britain, this auditing is often carried out by a qualified person called a "chartered accountant". In the United States, the professional designation is Certified Public Accountant or "CPA".^[2]

When accountants do accounting work, they write in the books of account (ledgers) that belong to a company. Every time money is spent or earned, it is written in the ledger. The information in the ledger is used to prepare the company accounts monthly, quarterly (every three months) and annually (every year). The accounts show what money the company has taken in over time and what it has spent money on. It also shows if the business made a profit in the year (if it made more money than it spent), who owes the company money, who the company owes money to, and any big expensive items the company has bought which they expect to use for many years. Lenders, managers, investors, tax authorities (the people who collect taxes for the government) and other decision-makers look at these accounts. Managers and investors look at the ledger and make decisions about how to spend money in the future. Lenders like banks look at the accounts before they lend money to the company. Tax authorities look at them to check that the company is paying the correct amount of taxes.

1. ↑ Elliot, Barry & Elliot, Jamie: Financial accounting and reporting, Prentice Hall, London 2004, ISBN 0-273-70364-1, p. 3, Google Books
2. ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions FAQs - Become a CPA". AICPA. Retrieved 2018-06-29.