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The historical development of accounting
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Once upon a time, Luca Pacioli wrote a math book. It was just a little survey and should have been treated like ordinary books of the time and read and then disappeared into historical archives and forgotten. A few brief chapters on practical mathematics made this one special.
The time was 1494. Columbus had discovered America just two years before. The author was a Franciscan monk.
The chapter on practical mathematics addressed mathematics in business. He said that the successful merchant needs three things: sufficient cash or credit, an accounting system that can tell him how he¡¯s doing, and good bookkeeper to operate it. His accounting system consisted of journals and ledgers. It rested on the invention of double-entry bookkeeping. Debits were on the left side because that¡¯s what ¡°debit¡± meant, ¡°the left¡±. The numbers on the right were named ¡°credits¡±.
If everything was done right, then the bookkeeper could do a trial balance (¡°summa summarium¡±). Add up all the debits and then add up all the credits, he said. If everything had been done right, the totals should match. If not, ¡°that would indicate a mistake in your Ledger, which mistake you will have to look for diligently with the industry and intelligence God gave you.¡± He wrote.
Experience
Before computers came along Jack had never got a trial balance right the first time. Many hours were spent looking for the mistakes, though not necessarily with the reverent attitude that Father Pacioli advised!
Double-entry bookkeeping was so simple and met the needs of business so well that it caught on immediately.
In 1850 14 accountants offered services to the public in New York City, 4 in Philadelphia, and 1 in Chicago. The British Isles was the su...
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...ervices: 1) Compilation, 2) Reviews and 3) Audits. Auditing: The Expectation Gap covers these. Responding to public pressure, they okayed plain paper ¡°management only¡± statements in 1998.
Other countries had their own rule-making activities. As the gray areas in accounting came to be covered by rules the flexibility of accountants to accommodate the differing practices of different countries disappeared. What to do?
More rules, of course! The International Accounting Standards Commission promulgated the rules for international accounting. This was set up in Britain just before the turn of the century.
With the corporate scandals directly involving misleading accounting in the early years of the 2000¡¯s, accounting has come back to the days of 1930¡¯s. This time it did not escape direct government oversight.
And they are not living happily ever after.
One must understand that the integral core of a company rests in its accounting and financial areas. The departments’ need employees with an advanced knowledge and skill set to ensure the payment of supplies and accounting on the expenditure is correctly recorded. If the accounting desk presents inaccurate spending calculations on behalf of the company, it could result in spending more than what has actually been earned; this could lead to the company not only being unable to increase in revenue, but also experience loss. It is imperative that the management of the financial department is well informed and able to make decisions by taking into account the usage of every coin stated in the expenditures, and also to know the amount of revenue the company is making so that we can plan on better strategies to improve the revenues (Lu, Madu, Kuei & Winokur, 1994).
Rittenberg, Larry, Bradley Schwieger, and Karla Johnstone. Auditing. 6th ed. Mason: Thomas South-Western, 2005. 10-40.
Lucas Pacioli was the first to describe a system of debts and credits in accord with journals and ledgers in 1494. These basics came together to be the concoction for what is known as accounting. Since the formal establishment of accounting in 1494, the field has expanded as the demands of the ever-changing economy became greater. The industrial revolution created the first jump in the field forcing the creation of sectors within. Since this first creation of sectors, accounting as a field has been creating more specific sects to accommodate a large variety of areas. The most common and large sects created this far include public and private accounting. Although both sects carry the same basis for their work, the variation between the two lies in their demographic, demands, and decoration.
Marshall, M.H., McManus, W.W., Viele, V.F. (2003). Accounting: What the Numbers Mean. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Abstract—During a one hundred year period, seven great mathematicians made contributions to our mathematical knowledge and notation that enabled the emergence of calculus. All were men of either the Catholic or opposing Protestant faith. Religious politics served as both an impetus and a hindrance to the men’s mathematical advances. The men were Francois Viéte, Simon Stevin, John Napier, Adriaan van Roomen, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, and Pierre de Fermat. Index Terms—analytical geometry, decimal notation, differential calculus, logarithms, number theory I. INTRODUCTION
Giroux, G. (Winter 2008). What went wrong? Accounting fraud and lessons from the recent scandals. Social Research, 75, 4. p.1205 (34). Retrieved June 16, 2011, from Academic OneFile via Gale:
creating situations where ethical issues such as independence and integrity are questioned making it imperative that the AICPA create guidelines from which the evolving profession must base itself. In the age of deregulation accounting jumped on the boa t, now it is becoming increasingly fashionable to re-regulate, accounting, as a profession must not miss that boat, lest they drown in the result-- government intervention.
Accounting Theory: Conceptual Issues in a Political and Economic Environment (6th edition ed.). South Western College Pub.
The second lesson concentrates on the importance of financial literacy. There is one rule to follow so as to understand financial literacy – “Know the difference between an asset and a liability, and buy more assets.” In order to do this, you need to be able to understand and comprehend numbers instead of jus...
Every transaction gets entered twice in financial records. If one day you sold three gold coins ' worth of pepper, you would write that the amount of cash you had went up by three gold coins. You would also write in that the amount of pepper you had went down by three gold coins ' worth. Before double-entry, people just kept diaries and counted their money at the end of the day. This innovation allowed merchants to see every aspect of their business in neat little rows. (Kestenbaum,
Accounting has been a living part of history since the Neolithic period and remains a prevalent and ever-evolving profession still to this day. This essay therefore proposes to look at the significance and role of history specifically related to the accountancy field. In order to substantiate this claim of the importance of accounting history, numerous benefits of accounting history will be presented. Factors such as the use of historical research and its availability thereof to constantly develop accounting policies will be discussed as well as how historical accounting practices can be used to understand current practice and assist in the training of individuals in the accounting field. Lastly, the importance of history in the development
In 1887, the American Association of Public Accountants was formed with the first standardized tests coming out about a decade later (Zeff, 2003, pg. 2). In 1896, New York State passed the first law for Certified Public Accountants (CPA), which Zeff (2003) “marked the beginning of an accredited profession of accounting in the United States” (pg 2). In Canada, the first association began in 1902 with the Dominion Association of Chartered Accountants (Buckstein, part 1 pg 2). Buckstein quoted John L. Carey, the author of a paper outlining the history of the accounting profession worldwide stated “the reason for creating a full-fledged professional organization was to distinguish skilled accountants of integrity from self-styled accountants whose competence had not been demonstrated” (pg. 2) As Zeff (2003) stated with the passage of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 all publicly traded companies were now required to have their financials audited by independent CPA’s (pg. 4). This showcased the importance of having skilled and knowledgeable individuals produce verifiable and accurate information that the public (in all its forms) could rely upon. The combination of having professional accounting bodies and government legislations have attempted to establish
If your friend has ever operated a business and you saw him placing figures in ledgers, then you saw him doing bookkeeping. If you have worked at a service station or supermarket and have seen books with large sheets lined in green and red lying on the manager's table or desk, you saw books of accounting.
The history of accounting I feel is important in the learning, understanding, and developing of my foundation for my accounting career. In this report you will learn about the development of accounting. You will learn about the people who influenced accounting the most throughout the years. You will learn how accounting came about and how it was used in the ancient times. You will learn about the invention of the double-entry bookkeeping processes. You will learn how things were done before the birth of the double-entry bookkeeping process. You will learn about Luca Pacioli and the Summa. You will also learn about modern accounting and ACAUS.
The success of a company is very dependent upon its financial accounting. In accounting there are numerous Regulatory bodies that govern the accounting world. These companies are extremely important to a company because they set the standards when it comes to the language and decision making of a company. These regulatory bodies can be structured as agencies, associations, commissions, and boards. Without companies like the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), Internal Accounting Standards Board (IASB), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and other regulatory bodies a company could not make well informed decisions. In this paper the author will look at only four of them.