Category: Accounting
Accounting or accountancy is the measurement, processing and communication of financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. The modern field was established by the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in 1494. Accountancy , which has been called the “language of business”, measures the results of an organization’s economic activities and conveys this information to a variety of users, including investors, creditors, management, and regulators. Practitioners of accountancy are known as accountants. The terms ‘accounting’ and ‘financial reporting’ are often used as synonyms.
It can be divided into several fields including financial accountancy , management accountancy , external auditing, and tax accountancy. Accountancy information systems are designed to support accounting functions and related activities. Financial accountancy focuses on the reporting of an organization’s financial information, including the preparation of financial statements, to external users of the information, such as investors, regulators and suppliers; and management accounting focuses on the measurement, analysis and reporting of information for internal use by management. The recording of financial transactions, so that summaries of the financials may be presented in financial reports, is known as bookkeeping, of which double-entry bookkeeping is the most common system.
