Accounting: Basic Principals and Personal Accounting
Author: MaryMaseko Total views: 51 Word Count: 409
With accounting, if everyone involved in the process of accounting followed their own system, or no system at all, there's be no way to truly tell whether a company was profitable or not. Most companies follow what are called generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, and there are huge tomes in libraries and bookstores devoted to just this one topic. Unless a company states otherwise, anyone reading a financial statement can make the assumption that company has used GAAP.
GAAP is the gold standard for preparing financial statement. Not disclosing that it has used principles other than GAAP makes a company legally liable for any misleading or misunderstood data. These principles have been fine-tuned over decades and have effectively governed accounting methods and the financial reporting systems of businesses. Different principles have been established for different types of business entities, such for-profit and not-for-profit companies, governments and other enterprises.
GAAP's in accounting are not cut and dried. However they're guidelines, and as such are often open to interpretation. They are estimates have to be made at times, and they require good faith efforts towards accuracy. You've surely heard the phrase "creative accounting" and this is when a company pushes the envelope a little (or a lot) to make their business look more profitable than it might actually be. This is also called massaging the numbers. This can get out of control and quickly turn into accounting fraud, which is also called cooking the books. The results of these practices can be devastating and ruin hundreds and thousands of lives, as in the cases of Enron, Rite Aid and others.
Personal accounting
If you have a checking account, of course you balance it periodically to account for any differences between what's in your statement and what you wrote down for checks and deposits. Many people do it once a month when their statement is mailed to them, but with the advent of online banking, you can do it daily if you're the sort whose banking tends to get away from them.
Income - any money you've earned from working or owning assets, unless there are specific exemptions from income tax.
Personal exemptions - this is a certain amount of income that is excused from tax, and taxable income - This is the balance of income that's subject to taxes after personal exemptions and deductions are factored in. So you should understand all the basic meanings of certain terms in accounting.
Article Source: Credit Card Bad Credit People
About the Author
Interested? lets get more Unique Finance Articles from this website: Unique Articles Information Guide. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service
Previous Article - Next Article
Copy and Paste Article Code.
Remember: The article body, title, author bio and links may not be changed or removed. By publishing this article, you agree to all the terms in our Terms of Service.