Introduction to Accounting and Its Importance

Introduction to Accounting and Its Importance: Accounting is a way to organize the finances of a business so that its financial transactions can be tracked accurately. Accounting is extremely significant for every business. Therefore, every individual involved in a business is required to have basic knowledge of accounting and its importance, which we have elaborated on below. They can also consider taking up a small business accounting course for a better understanding of concepts.

The topics covered in this article are:

What is Accounting?

Accounting is an organized and systematic way of recording the financial transactions that are made by a business. It is a process that summarizes, analyzes, and reports business transactions to third parties like regulators, oversight agencies, and tax collectors.

Being one of the most important functions of a business, accounting is carried out by a professional accountant or bookkeeper in small firms, and by financial departments at bigger companies. Accounting generates various important reports of cost accounting and managerial accounting which the management helps the business management in making informed decisions. Introduction to Accounting and Its Importance.

Bookkeepers may handle basic functions of accounting, but only qualified accountants who are designated by the central authorities (Chartered Accountant, etc.) are supposed to handle advanced accounting functions of a business.

Accounting helps in creating the financial statements of a company. Financial statements of a business summarize its operations, cash flow, and financial position in the market for a said period of time. They concisely summarize several financial transactions that the business may have made and recorded in a particular time period. This helps investors and other entities to analyze the financial position of a business and make decisions accordingly.

While preparing financial statements of a business, accountants usually follow the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). GAAP is basically a set of accounting principles or standards that follows the double-entry system of accounting. It is used in the identification of balance sheets, measuring outstanding shares, and other issues of accounting.

Importance of Accounting

Accounting mainly helps in recording transactions in an organized manner and creating financial statements for a business. However, accurate and proper accounting can pose as a defense mechanism of business. Accurate accounting helps in reducing business exposure to fraudulent risks. If the accounting is done right, then the audits conducted by the government will not create any hurdle in the daily operations of the business.

Accounting allows the business to grow in a measured and planned manner. It helps in tracking the business assets, liabilities, expenses, and income so that the business can make informed financial decisions. Decisions made on the basis of the present financial health and past performance of the business will help in molding a more financially stable future. This will propel the growth of the business and guide it to the path of attaining maximum profit.

Accounting done wisely will help the business in attracting and satisfying its customers. It helps the business to have knowledge of its financial position and understand its sources of revenue and expenses. This gives a better understanding of the business to the management and shows how the business can be grown while maintaining customer satisfaction.

Lastly, accounting informs the business what it owes and what it is owed. It helps in tracking loan and interest repayments, managing payroll records, maintaining a budget, attracting potential investors, and setting up accurate financial records for payment of business taxes. In recent years a whole new set of online accounting products has become available. The most well-known is Xero. Being in the cloud they allow you to access your accounts from anywhere that has an internet connection. And their intuitive layout makes it quick and simple to learn to use.

Types of Accounting

There are three main categories of accounting: financial accounting, managerial accounting, and cost accounting. They are elaborated as follows:

Financial Accounting.

Financial accounting involves those processes which are used by professional accountants to generate the accounting and financial statements of a business, annually. These statements are then made public to be viewed by investors, creditors, customers, and regulatory bodies. It aims at providing the financial information of a business to its outsider parties. Financial accounting considers money to be a measure of the economic performance of a business.

Managerial Accounting.

Managerial or Management accounting involves those processes that are used by professional accountants to generate monthly and quarterly reports, which can be used by the management of the business to make important business decisions. It aims at helping managers and supervisors of the company in making financial decisions.

Cost Accounting.

Cost accounting involves those processes which take into account all the costs related to the manufacturing of a product. The information produced by cost accounting further helps managers, analysts, accountants, and business owners to do the costing of their products. Cost accounting considers money to be an economic factor of production. As you might know, Invoices are a critical element of accounting internal controls and audits. zintego.com plays a crucial role in making invoices over the online platforms in easy manner.

Introduction to Accounting and Its Importance.

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