Accounting has been defined by the profession as “The art of recording, classifying, and summarising, in terms of money, transactions and events which are, essentially, financial in nature, and interpreting the results accordingly.”
Accounting relates to the dissemination and measurement of financial information by accountancy professionals to establish the level of performance of an organisation. The culmination of such analysis is the preparation and production of a set of financial accounts representing company performance in the previous twelve months.
The accounting function is normally divided into three separate branches:
The Financial Accountant prepares and analyses the financial data necessary for the decision makers within a business organisation. In the case of public companies, such information, in the form of financial accounts, is made available for public scrutiny.
Management accounting, by contrast, is associated with the flow of company information, and is normally confidential in nature and available only to a select group of individuals, such as board members and accounting management.
Further, companies pay corporation tax and individual employees pay income tax and national insurance, and it is necessary to produce this type of financial information for the relevant tax authorities.
Accountants are accounting professionals, representative of these three branches of accountancy. There are a number of professional bodies who represent accountants, the most important being Chartered accountants (ACA), Certified accountants (ACCA), Management accountants (ACMA) and, in the US, Certified Public accountants (CPA).
A completely separate branch of accounting is that of Auditing. An independent auditor who examines the financial statements, in the form of financial accounts, and accounting records of the organisation with whom he is conducting the audit, is called an external auditor. The purpose of such an audit is to provide an independent record of the fairness and accuracy of the accounting statements in accordance with laid down procedures such as, in the US, the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, also known as GAAP accounting, and elsewhere, in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
Some companies believe in auditing themselves, apart of an external audit, in order to provide ongoing financial information specifically for use by management. Such internal auditors are normally employed by the company itself.
The financial reports, especially the annual accounts, are not only used for the benefit of company management, but are also invaluable to external groups, such as shareholders, creditors and the banks. The preparation of the various accounting reports, necessary for any business, relies implicitly on the day-to-day production and dissemination of financial information generated by way of double-entry bookkeeping.
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