Introduction
Accountancy is the process of communicating financial information about a business entity to users such as stakeholders and managers. The communication is generally in the form of financial statements that show in money terms the economic resources under the control of management; the art lies in selecting the information that is relevant to the user. The principles of accountancy are applied to business entities in three divisions of practical art: accounting, bookkeeping, and auditing.
Accounting Defined
The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) defines accountancy as "the art of recording, classifying, and summarizing, in a significant manner and in terms of money, transactions and events which are, in part at least, of financial character, and interpreting the results thereof. "
History
The earliest accounting records were found amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon, Assyria and Sumeria, which date back more than 7,000 years. The people of that time relied on primitive accounting methods to record the growth of crops and herds. Because there is a natural season to farming and herding, it is easy to count and determine if a surplus had been gained after the crops had been harvested or the young animals weaned.
Token Accounting in Mesopotamia
The invention of a form of bookkeeping using clay tokens represented a huge cognitive leap for mankind.
When medieval Europe moved to a monetary economy in the 13th century, sedentary merchants depended on bookkeeping to oversee multiple simultaneous transactions financed by bank loans. One important breakthrough took place around that time: the introduction of double-entry bookkeeping, which is defined as any bookkeeping system in which there was a debit and credit entry for each transaction, or for which the majority of transactions were intended to be of this form. The historical origin of the use of the words 'debit' and 'credit' in accounting goes back to the days of single-entry bookkeeping in which the chief objective was to keep track of amounts owed by customers (debtors) and amounts owed to creditors. Thus, 'Debit,' from the Latin word debere means 'he owes' and 'Credit', from the Latin word credere, means 'he trusts'.
The earliest extant evidence of full double-entry bookkeeping is the Farolfi ledger of 1299-1300. Giovanno Farolfi & Company were a firm of Florentine merchants whose head office was in Nîmes, and who also acted as moneylenders to the Archbishop of Arles, their most important customer. The oldest discovered record of a complete double-entry system is the Messari (Italian: "Treasurer's") accounts of the city of Genoa in 1340. The Messari accounts contain debits and credits journalized in a bilateral form, and contain balances carried forward from the preceding year. Therefore, they enjoy general recognition as a double-entry system.
Luca Pacioli's "Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità " (early Italian: "Review of Arithmetic, Geometry, Ratio and Proportion") was first printed and published in Venice in 1494. It included a 27-page treatise on bookkeeping, "Particularis de Computis et Scripturis" (Latin: "Details of Calculation and Recording"). It was written primarily for, and sold mainly to, merchants who used the book as a reference text, as a source of pleasure from the mathematical puzzles it contained, and to aid the education of their sons. It represents the first known printed treatise on bookkeeping; and it is widely believed to be the forerunner of modern bookkeeping practice.
Father of Double-Entry Accounting
Portrait of Luca Pacioli, attributed to Jacopo de' Barbari, 1495 (Museo di Capodimonte).
In "Summa Arithmetica," Pacioli introduced symbols for plus and minus for the first time in a printed book, symbols that became standard notation in Italian Renaissance mathematics. "Summa Arithmetica" was also the first known book printed in Italy to contain algebra. Although Luca Pacioli did not invent double-entry bookkeeping, his 27-page treatise on bookkeeping contained the first known published work on that topic, and is said to have laid the foundation for double-entry bookkeeping as it is practiced today. Even though Pacioli's treatise exhibits almost no originality, it is generally considered as an important work, mainly because it enjoyed a wide circulation, was written in the vernacular Italian language, and was a printed book.
Past
Early accounts served mainly to assist the memory of the businessperson, and the audience for the account was the proprietor or record keeper alone. Cruder forms of accounting were inadequate for the problems created by a business entity involving multiple investors, so double-entry bookkeeping first emerged in northern Italy in the 14th century, where trading ventures began to require more capital than a single individual was able to invest. The development of joint stock companies created wider audiences for accounts, as investors without firsthand knowledge of their operations relied on accounts to provide the requisite information. This development resulted in a split of accounting systems for internal (i.e., management accounting) and external (i.e., financial accounting) purposes, and subsequently also in accounting and disclosure regulations, following a growing need for independent attestation of external accounts by auditors.
Present
Today, accounting is called "the language of business" because it is the vehicle for reporting financial information about a business entity to many different groups of people. Accounting that concentrates on reporting to people inside the business entity is called management accounting and is used to provide information to employees, managers, owner-managers, and auditors. Management accounting is concerned primarily with providing a basis for making management or operating decisions. Accounting that provides information to people outside the business entity is called financial accounting and provides information to both current and potential shareholders, creditors such as banks or vendors, financial analysts, economists, and government agencies. Because these users have different needs, the presentation of financial accounts is very structured and subject to many more rules than management accounting. The body of rules that governs financial accounting in a given jurisdiction is called Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP. Other rules include International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), U.S. GAAP, Canadian GAAP, and the GAAP in other specific countries.