Accounting has been defined by the profession as "The art of recording, classifying, and summarizing, 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 o...
Accountants keep track of payments, financial positions, and transfers of capital or income for individual or institutional clients. Some are responsible for examining the tax implications of those actions. Accountants must be comfortable with numbers, but must also spend a considerable amount of time reviewing other people’s work and, in particular, delivering bad news. As a “financial physician” (a term that cropped up more than once in our surveys), you’ll be the bearer of unpleasantness more often than blessings, and can expect to be greeted, at times, in a less-than-friendly fashion. People who enter accounting mention this stigma as the most unanticipated downside of the profession. “I didn’t know how many people just don’t pay attention to their own numbers,” wrote one frustrated internal auditor, “and how defensive people are when they’re wrong.” An average internal auditor spends a surprisingly small (35) percent of her time on paperwork, document review, and (usually computer...