accounts

Financial records of an organization that register all financial transactions, and must be kept at its principal office or place of business. The purpose of these records is to enable anyone to appraise the organization's current financial position with reasonable accuracy. Firms present their annual accounts in two main parts: the balance sheet, and the income statement (profit and loss account). The annual accounts of a registered or incorporated firm are required by law to disclose a certain amount of information. And have to be certified by an external auditor that they present a 'true and fair view' of the firm's financial affairs. See also Account.

accounting
Practice and body of knowledge concerned primarily with (1) methods for recording transactions, (2) keeping financial records, (3) performing internal audits, (4) reporting and analyzing financial information to the management, and (5) advising on taxation matters. It is a systematic process of identifying, recording, measuring, classifying, verifying, summarizing, interpreting and communicating financial information. It reveals profit or loss for a given period, and the value and nature of a firm's assets, liabilities and owners' equity. Accounting provides information on the (1) resources available to a firm, (2) the means employed to finance those resources, and (3) the results achieved through their use.

management accounting
The process of preparing management reports and accounts that provide accurate and timely financial and statistical information required by managers to make day-to-day and short-term decisions. Unlike financial accounting, which produces annual reports mainly for external stakeholders, management accounting generates monthly or weekly reports for an organization's internal audiences such as department managers and the chief executive officer. These reports typically show the amount of available cash, sales revenue generated, amount of orders in hand, state of accounts payable and accounts receivable, outstanding debts, raw material and inventory, and may also include trend charts, variance analysis, and other statistics. Also called managerial accounting.