The tasks of accounting (reflection in the accounting of economic activity) are solved through the use of various ways and techniques, the totality of which is called the accounting method, which includes the following main elements:
- documentation
- grade
- accounting system
- double entry
- inventory
- calculation
- balance sheet and reporting
To solve the main tasks and conduct accounting, an accountant needs to draw up balance sheet and accounting reports. Now that we have covered the terms bookkeeping and accounting, let's take a closer look at the concepts of balance and reporting.
Balance sheet and reporting
The balance sheet is a way of grouping the assets and liabilities of an organization in monetary terms, designed to characterize its financial position on a certain date, an element of financial statements. Understanding the definition of the balance sheet, we have discovered new terms for us: assets and liabilities.
Asset - part of the balance sheet (left side), reflecting the composition and value of the organization's property on a certain date. Set of property rights: material assets, Money, debt claims, etc. belonging to a legal entity.
Liabilities (from Latin - inactive) - the part of the balance sheet opposite to the asset ( Right side), - the totality of all obligations (sources of formation of funds) of the enterprise.
The balance sheet has the form of a two-sided table: one side is assets, that is, claims and investments, the second is liabilities, that is, liabilities and capital.
The main property of the report is that total assets are always equal to total liabilities. This is due to the fact that when reflecting operations on accounts in the balance sheet, the principle of double entry is observed.
Accounting statements are a unified system of data on the property and financial position of an organization and on the results of its economic activity, compiled on the basis of data accounting according to the established forms.
IN different countries accepted different systems accounting reporting. IN Russian Federation financial statements are regulated by the law on accounting and the Regulations on Accounting (RAP), which are developed by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, as well as certain articles of the tax code.
So, we have identified and dealt with the concepts of interest to us and brought some clarity to the understanding of the tasks and responsibilities of an accountant. This is quite enough to understand the importance and necessity of specialists and professionals in this profession. The performance of this work requires professionalism and certain experience. In order to master the profession of an accountant, you need to know the theory of accounting - theoretical, methodological and practical foundations his organization. Of greater importance is the understanding of the functions of accounting - control, information and analytical. To be successful in the profession of an accountant, you also need to master the methods of accounting.
Accounting courses from GTsDPO
City Center Additional Vocational Education holds training courses accountants. Our training center provides training and education for both beginner accountants and chief accountants, accountants of enterprises Catering as well as continuing education courses for accountants and training for professional accountants.
The GCCPO Training Center conducts accounting courses to study the main duties and tasks for an accountant discussed in this article. These are accounting and tax courses. You will learn how to maintain accounting records, draw up a balance sheet and financial statements, as well as keep tax records and prepare tax returns. Our training center provides graduates of these courses with assistance and assistance in finding employment as an assistant accountant and an accountant in a small business.
Also, our training center conducts accounting courses in trade, which will allow students to learn the rules and features of accounting in a trade organization. Students will consider trade as an object of accounting, learn how to use cash registers and get acquainted with the features of export and import operations.
Accounting courses are taught by professional teachers, acting accountants with extensive experience. The Training Center of the GCCPE constantly recruits students for accounting courses in groups of morning, afternoon, evening training, as well as weekend groups and intensive training groups. You can choose a time convenient for you.
Even if you are deeply convinced that you have nothing to do with accounting, think about whether in your life - at least once - words like "assets", "credit", "funds", "audit", and so on.
Surely, you correlated your family’s income with monthly expenses, made some savings, distributed the budget by items: buy food with this money, pay for public utilities, these means to put on payment kindergarten child, etc. If you had such a practice, it means that you still have at least a superficial idea of accounting. However, accounting offices - the holy of holies of any enterprise - seem to be a natural secret behind seven locks to the broad masses. Let's lift the curtain.
How did accounting begin, what is its history?
If they start telling you something about Luca Pacioli right off the bat, pretending that accounting is his doing, don't listen. In fact, this art is almost six thousand years old. That is, it appeared approximately at the same time when a person began economic activity.
It all began, of course, with simple accounting, or unigraphic accounting. The essence of simple bookkeeping is to reproduce the facts of current economic activity exactly in the data in which they appeared (remember, for example, exchange systems - shells in exchange for sheep, and so on). Simple bookkeeping, as a tool for systematic monitoring of housekeeping, went through five stages:
- inventory accounting;
- current account;
- money as an object of accounting;
- money as an object of settlement;
- money and countercurrent as a concept prevailing over inventory.
Thus, simple accounting made it possible to take control of both goods and money. This state of affairs continued until ancient rome and the beginning of an era early renaissance. And these two eras gave rise to two new branches - Roman law and commercial (economic) law.
IN early middle ages accounting received new round- bookkeeping. Its essence was reduced to the use of the cash register and the registration of all funds passing through it.
But the Middle Ages became a real heyday of accounting: thanks to the Italians, whose country at that time was the center of world trade, a new financial vocabulary appeared, which included the concepts of accounts, new combinations of records, and so on.
Gutenberg's invention of printing helped spread this knowledge to the whole world. New forms of accounting began to appear - for example, the system of double, that is, debit-credit - entry, to which the world is indebted to the above-mentioned Luca Pacioli. His book "On Accounts and Records" is considered the world's first documentary evidence of accounting, the Accountant's Bible. Actually, the content of the book is an analysis of business transactions, multiplied by the methods of keeping books - an inventory book, a journal, a memorial. As a result, the law of double entry appeared - and Pacioli proved that any organization, any system of books and accounts can be built on this law. The appearance of double entry led to the functioning of accounting in its current form. Later, other related concepts appeared - tax accounting, bank accounting, and so on.
What is accounting?
Speaking plain language, accounting is a system for controlling financial movements, the main purpose of which is to record, summarize and interpret financial data.
There are more specific definition accounting. It was given back in 1966 by the US Accountants Association. It sounds like this:
Accounting is a process that combines the definition, measurement and presentation of economic information in an enterprise or organization, the purpose of which is to make informed decisions made by users of this data.
There are three key aspects to this definition:
- accounting is the definition of the financial components of the enterprise's activities: they include accounts, assets and liabilities, capital, as well as income, expenses and cash flows;
- accounting is a measure of value financial indicators, which makes it possible to generate adequate financial statements and present information in it objectively and as reliably as possible, that is, as required by law (in the Russian Federation, this process is regulated by the Federal Law “On Accounting”);
- accounting is the provision of information about financial activities enterprises in the most convenient form for potential users.
Thus, accounting is a system that reflects the financial component of the organization's activities in full. It is quite obvious that this system has its own norms and principles.
Basic accounting principle
There is a whole system of principles and rules that are recognized as mandatory for accountants. Their essence, no matter what it is about - about making calculations, about calculating indicators, or about how financial statements, comes down to GAAP. This acronym stands for "generally accepted accounting principles".
The main ones are the principles of the foundations. At the root of these principles lies the idea of accounting independence.
The accounting department, being a separate organization or an integral part of an existing organization, is still an independent economic unit independent of other departments or parts of the enterprise. His activities can control or subjugate the functioning of the organization, but they will not mix under any circumstances - otherwise the idea of \u200b\u200baccounting as such will go down the drain.
For example, somewhere in Italy there is a certain Giovanni, the owner of a small pizzeria. Giovanni has a bank account, which by the end of last year showed a balance of 30 thousand euros. True, only 15 thousand Giovanni earned on his pizzeria. The remaining 15 he helped out by selling the family boat. If Señor Giovanni follows the principle of fundamentals on which accounting is based, he will take into account the funds that he received from business operations, that is, from the operation of a pizzeria, as a separate item of the economy. And, accordingly, he will spend it separately from the funds that he received from the sale of the boat. The sale of the boat will then become the second economic item - owned by him and not related to operational aspects. If you follow this division, it will become much easier to build a concept for further work: Giovanni understands that the pizzeria brought a little, and will make a plan to increase economic indicators. But if he mixed concepts and neglected the principle of the basics, he would believe that the pizzeria brought him 30 thousand euros. He would consider such an indicator satisfactory and, therefore, would receive a false picture.
"There are three types of lies: flattery, lies and accounting"
Tatiana Pavlovskaya
Accounting is an ordered system for collecting, registering and summarizing information in monetary terms about the state of property, liabilities and capital of an organization and their changes through a continuous, continuous and documentary reflection of all business transactions.
Tax accounting is a system for summarizing information for determining the tax base for tax based on data primary documents grouped in accordance with the procedure provided for by the Tax Code of the Russian Federation.
Target tax accounting - formation of complete and reliable information on accounting for taxation purposes of all business transactions at the enterprise.
Tax accounting is carried out in special forms - tax registers.
There are two main methods of tax accounting:
1. Based on accounting. In this case, tax registers are filled in according to the data of accounting registers. If the accounting rules of a particular transaction diverge from the rules of tax accounting, then adjustments are made in the tax registers.
2. Organization of separate tax accounting. In this case, tax accounting is conducted independently of accounting.
Accounting objects are the property of organizations, their obligations and business operations carried out by organizations in the course of their activities.
The subject of accounting is the value circulation (movement) of economic assets in the process of expanded reproduction and their condition on a certain date.
Accounting in accordance with the law on accounting can be maintained by: a chief accountant hired by an enterprise on employment contract, CEO in the absence of an accountant, an accountant who is not the main one, or a third-party organization (accounting support).
The main task of accounting is the formation of complete and reliable information ( financial statements) on the activities of the organization and its property status, on the basis of which it becomes possible:
§ prevention of negative results of economic activities of the organization;
§ identification of on-farm reserves to ensure the financial stability of the organization;
§ control of compliance with the law in the implementation of economic operations by the organization;
§ control of expediency of economic operations;
§ control over the availability and movement of property and liabilities;
§ control over the use of material, labor and financial resources;
§ control of compliance of activities with approved norms, standards and estimates.
The methodology (concept) of accounting is a system of methods and techniques, their scientific generalization in order to develop tools for understanding objects of economic activity in their dynamics and statics. In the practice of accounting (both in Russia and abroad), various private methods of fixing and grouping, generalizing, evaluating (calculating) individual accounting objects and indicators are used and constantly supplemented.
Typical examples of private methods are: double rate method, linear, residual value, decreasing numbers (for depreciation of property); share (to calculate the share of the investor of the company); distribution of transport and procurement costs (for calculating actual cost inventories acquired in ownership); revenue accounting (to account for income from the sale of products, goods, works, services); distribution of overhead and general business expenses (to determine the actual production cost of labor products), etc.
Thus, the accounting method allows you to obtain information about the availability and condition of the organization's property, the sources of formation of this property (both own and borrowed), and the results of activities.
The accounting method is a set of methods and techniques by which the economic activity of the enterprise is continuously studied and summarized.
Elements of an accounting method
The accounting cycle includes four successive stages of processing and summarizing accounting and economic information. Therefore, the method consists of four elements:
· Primary supervision (documentation and inventory).
· Complete, complex generalization of information (interconnected reflection, grouping of information about individual accounting objects, methods - accounts and double entry).
Documentation. Feature accounting is that it is based on the continuous documentation of business transactions. This requirement is enshrined in current national legislation, primarily federal law"About Accounting".
The accounting department is obliged to check primary documents in a timely manner and control the information contained in them.
The primary document (for accounting) is a written certificate of a certain economic fact (operation) that has legal force and does not require further explanation and detail. The primary document contains information, information, data recorded on a material carrier (paper, film, magnetic disk), which are of an official nature and are addressed to the relevant official.
According to the information contained in the document, the responsibility of individual executors for the consequences of their business operations is established. Each primary document reflects one perfect fact of economic activity. Hence the purpose of the documentation is a continuous continuous accounting of all economic facts (operations). The document indicates the nature and essence of the operation, its content and quantitative expression. The document not only registers and formalizes the operations performed, but also often serves as an order or basis for its implementation (for example, the manager’s order to send an employee on a business trip serves as the basis for issuing a travel certificate and money for travel expenses).
The quality of accounting largely depends on the quality of primary documents. By means of documentation, the correctness of the operations performed is controlled, a current analysis of the enterprise's work is carried out, and the causes of certain economic violations are established.
Accounting reporting is a unified comprehensive system of indicators of the property and financial position of an enterprise on the results of its economic activity, compiled on the basis of accounting data in accordance with established forms and designed to detail accounting and economic information. The reporting period is the calendar period between the dates of the previous and the new report. Reporting date - the date on which the company is required to prepare financial statements.
Internal users of financial statements - managers, founders, participants and owners of the organization's property.
External users of financial statements - investors, creditors, the state.
Accounting is closely related to tax and management accounting.
Accounting method
The totality of all the techniques and methods by which the movement and condition of economic assets and their sources are reflected in accounting includes the following main elements:
§ documentation
§ grade
§ accounting system
§ double entry
§ inventory
§ calculation
§ balance sheet and reporting.
Subjects of accounting
Accounting can be kept:
§ accounting department, which is part of the enterprise;
§ an accountant;
§ the head of the organization;
§ third party organization.
Accounting principles
The principles of accounting are the basic, initial, basic provisions of accounting as a science that predetermine all subsequent statements arising from them. The main accounting principles are as follows:
The principle of autonomy assumes that this or that organization exists as a single independent entity; its property is strictly separated from the property of its co-owners, employees and other organizations. Accounting data is single system, corresponding to the tasks of property management, obligations and business operations carried out by the organization in the course of its functioning. Accounting elements that do not affect business processes are removed from the accounting system as redundant. The accounting and balance sheet reflects only property that is recognized as the property of this particular organization.
Double entry principle- double continuous reflection of economic phenomena, facts and operations, predetermined by the use of double entry on accounts, that is, simultaneously and for the same amount on the debit of one account and the credit of another accounting account.
Operating Organization Principle assumes that the organization functions normally and will maintain its position in the market for the foreseeable future, repaying obligations to suppliers and consumers and other partners in in due course. This principle makes it necessary to link the assets of the organization with its future profit, which can be obtained with the help of these assets. Special meaning this principle acquires when assessing the property and obligations of the organization.
The principle of objectivity consists in the fact that all business transactions must be reflected in accounting, be registered throughout all stages of accounting, confirmed by supporting documents on the basis of which accounting is maintained.
Prudence principle implies a certain degree of care in the process of forming the judgments required in calculations made under conditions of uncertainty, to avoid overstating assets or income, and understating liabilities or expenses. The exercise of the prudence principle prevents hidden reserves and excess inventories, knowingly understating assets or income, or deliberately overstating a liability or expenses. Neglect of this principle will lead to the fact that the financial statements will no longer be neutral and, therefore, will lose reliability.
accrual principle- all transactions are recorded as they occur, and not at the time of payment, and refer to the reporting period when the transaction was performed. This principle can be conditionally divided into:
The principle of recording income (revenue)- income is reflected in the period when it is received, and not when payment is made. In Russia, the moment of sale of products is determined by shipment and payment. International standards allow fixing the sale of shipment, delivery, receipt of money by the seller or agent;
The matching principle is the income of the reporting period must be correlated with the expenses due to which these incomes were received. Of course, expenses (income) relating to the corresponding income (expenses) recognized in another reporting period are accounted for separately.
Principle of Periodicity is aimed at regular, periodically recurring balance generalization - drawing up a balance sheet and reporting for the year, half year, quarter, month. This principle ensures the comparability of reporting data, allows after the expiration of certain periods time to calculate financial results.
The principle of confidentiality. The content of internal accounting information is a trade secret of the organization, for disclosure and damage to its interests, responsibility is provided for by law.
The principle of monetary measurement, that is, the quantitative measurement and calculation of the facts of economic activity and production processes; the unit of measure is the country's currency.
The principle of succession involves reasonable commitment national traditions, achievements of domestic science and practice.
Protective function of accounting. The protective function of accounting is understood as ensuring the protection of the property interests of participants in economic activity, namely:
owners (participants, shareholders) of the enterprise;
employees of the enterprise;
states.
There are two components protective function accounting:
preventive (preventive);
protective (trace-forming).
Warning (preventive) function is aimed at making it difficult for a person to commit violations by exercising current control. That is, the accounting system itself is built in such a way that all actions of persons involved in the implementation of business operations are as transparent as possible; known big circle persons; subject to immediate control; related to the actions of others.
Protective (trace-forming) function triggered after a violation occurs. It is provided by the ability of the accounting system to adequately reflect the facts of destructive deviations in economic activity against the will of intruders. That is, despite the efforts of persons interested in hiding information about the violations committed, with well-organized accounting, there are traces in the accounting documents that make it possible to identify such facts.
The legislation of the Russian Federation on accounting consists of:
other federal laws,
decrees of the President of the Russian Federation,
Decrees of the Government of the Russian Federation.
Story
Antiquity
The beginnings of accounting were practiced in all civilizations of the irrigation type. First notable examples of this kind - clay tablets of the period Babylonian kingdom. The same type of primitive accounting includes, for example, quipu - the system of nodular writing of the Incas.
new time
Double-entry accounting was first introduced into commercial practice in Venice at the end of the 13th century. A systematic presentation of double-entry accounting was given in classical work Italian mathematician L. Pacioli in 1494: the article “Treatise on Accounts and Records” was included in the preface to the encyclopedia on mathematics (Italian: Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità).
In the 18th century, Barrem's rules for debit and credit were formulated. In 1840, Vanier put forward the principle that accounting is done on behalf of the firm, not its owner.
