Talk:Accountancy

I'm an accountant, with years of managerial, public, and governmental accounting experience. I am also an adjunct instructor in accounting. The field of accounting is HUGE, and may be of interest only to a few. I just updated the question about accounting standards on the previous page. If you have any questions that you feel should be answered, please ask. Otherwise, I'll just post things I find interesting and may very well leave out fundamental aspects of accounting.

Expanding into a full book
(Previous content removed; issues have mostly been addressed.)

1 - History and Overview - A brief history of accounting, as well as introduction and explanation of some of the fundamental principles. Also covers forms of business ownership (Proprietorship, Partnership, Corporation, and variants thereof) and how they affect accounting.
 * I think the module with the title Accounting should be a comprehensive text, while smaller topics (such as a Quick Reference) should have their own 'books'.
 * Outline: Following is a tentative outline of the chapters to be included. Most of what is currently in the article should probably be rolled off into Chapters 2-4.


 * What is the purpose of this text? You can't make a text that covers an entire undergraduate and graduate accounting curriculum; it would be huge.  So you need to focus on a need.  I'm assuming that this is meant primarily as an introductory (first course) course in accounting.  If so, then I'd drop the history.  While I'd personally love to see a good history of accounting text book, I've already got my B.B.A and M.Acc.fcoulter (talk) 20:10, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

2 - Accounts - Explanation of types of accounts, and an introduction to Journalizing.


 * I'd break this into two sections. First, an explanation of the types of accounts and the accounting equation.  Then, I'd put journalizing after the next chapter on Transactions.fcoulter (talk) 20:12, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

3 - Transactions - In-depth recording of transactions from the original document through the journals to the ledger. Chapters 2 and 3 are likely to be very long and perhaps should be divided further.


 * I agree with the thought that this should be broken into two chapters. First, using the accounting equation I suggested you introduce above, have a chapter discussion transactions.  Then, the next chapter talks about the mechanics of journalizing transactions.  Heck, you could even add one more chapter on moving from the General Journal to the General Ledger.  (I know that computers hide this from most people, but you need to understand what's happening if you want to call yourself an accountant.)fcoulter (talk) 20:15, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

4 - Financial Statements - This is in preparation of the next chapter. (Trial Balances would have been introduced in an earlier chapter, however, to show the balance of the accounting equation, most likely in Chapters 1 and/or 2.)


 * Which statements are you planning on doing here? I'd skip Cash Flow for quite a while.  And if you're not closing the books, do you really want to create a Balance Sheet?  I would either move closing entries up before this chapter, or only deal with the Income Statement.fcoulter (talk) 20:19, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

5 - The Accounting Cycle - Adjustments and Closing entries, and a comprehensive review up to this point.


 * As I said above, I would discuss closing entries and the Accounting Cycle before Financial Statements. A review chapter at this point would also be an interesting idea.fcoulter (talk) 20:23, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

6 - Partnerships and Corporations - In-depth coverage of how equity transactions differ between forms of business. Up until now all examples would've been for a Proprietorship; following this, all examples should be of mixed business types.


 * It looks like you're going back over the balance sheet / income statement accounts in more detail. But I wouldn't do it in this order.  The equity section is the most confusing for my students.  I would hold off on this until after making another sweep through the balance sheet (and maybe even revenues and expenses).fcoulter (talk) 20:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

7 - Credit Transactions - Reviews recievables/payables, introduces credit terms(in preparation for the next chapter - just an overview), and subsidiary ledgers.


 * I would discuss assets in one chapter, liabilities in the next, then the equity chapter you listed above. Cash, receivables, and inventory are far easier to understand than prepaid expenses.fcoulter (talk) 20:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

8 - Merchandising Activities - Sales/COGS transactions, Merchandise valuation methods (FIFO, LIFO, etc.), and special journals.


 * Using Sales, you could go into both CoGS as well as special journals and subsiary ledgers. I'm not sure how far you should go in merchandise valuation in an intro book.  (I find it really difficult to go into any detail about inventory valuation before the student has taken a decent cost accounting course (or at least the second semester managerial accounting course). Then another chapter on other special journals and other subsidiary ledgers would be good.


 * Basically, I'm a little concerned that your outline will result in either (a) very long and hard to digest chapters, or (2) an outline of an introductory accounting text book. By breaking it down further (and possibly reordering some items), I think you can avoid these potential pitfalls.fcoulter (talk) 20:36, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I think this point would be good to break for an introductory Accounting book; it is equivalant to what is covered in a 101-level college course or an introductory high school-level course. A next-level book would probably work better as a seperate project, but until such a project begins, this one should probably stay here at Accounting, and if/when it does begin, this should probably be moved to Fundamentals of Accounting or Principals of Accounting or something similar, but seeing as how there currently isn't much other material, I don't see a need to move it now.


 * The reason for moving it now would be that once it's complete, you may wish to publisize it. If you move it, then all the links will be broken.  Why would you want to go to the trouble of writing a text book and only use it for your classes. rather than sharing it with the world.


 * Of course, that goes directly to the question of why you're writing this book. There are lots of Introductory Accounting text books out there.  There are even some good free ones.  (I like Principles of Accounting.  Writing a text book is hard work.  What will be different (better?) about your book that justifies all the time you're putting into it?


 * Yes, I too am in the very early stages of writing an accounting text book. But my first step is to see if what I want is commercially (or freely) available.  I don't think so, but I've contacted a couple of the professional organizations to double check.  If it's available for free, and it's well done, I'm not going to duplicate it.  If it's available commercially at an inexpensive price, it'll be very difficult to justify writing one.  However, I think that it's not available elsewhere, and that the potential market is not large enough to justify attempting to get a text book publisher to pick it up.  And so, I'm investigating the possibilities.fcoulter (talk) 20:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

One convention I've found to be effective in Accounting textbooks is the use of fictional businesses throughout the chapters as examples to the concepts presented. That's probably all that would be needed to start with. Special journals and subsidiary ledgers only appear briefly so having their own template would be a waste and it would probably just be easier to Table those. But general journals and ledgers are going to appear throughout the text and this would expedite the process quite a bit - the contributors could concentrate on text and examples, and not markup.
 * Chapter Format: Each chapter should follow a certain format, something like(but not limited to) the following:
 * 1) Chapter Overview - Brief summary paragraph (less than 10 lines or so) introducing the material of the chapter.
 * 2) Terms - List of new terms with links to glossary page(see below).
 * 3) Chapter Body - This may end up being split into multiple subpages due to length, since multiple related topics are covered in each chapter. A short review problem or a few short questions should be at the end of each section, with the answers on the chapter's Answer Page(once again, see below).
 * 4) Chapter Summary - Review of the chapter.
 * 5) Exercises - Several large problems and some smaller problems covering different aspects of the chapter.
 * 6) Summary Problems - A few (no more than three?) comprehensive problems that encompass the entire chapter as well as reinforce concepts from earlier chapters.
 * The glossary and answer pages were mentioned above. The glossary page is just that - an alphabetical glossary, cross-referenced back to the original appearance of the term. Terms should be linked to the glossary in the Terms section of the chapter, the first appearance of the term in the Chapter Body, and in the Chapter Summary.
 * The answer pages are answers to the problems given in the body text and end section of the chapter. In addition to giving the actual answers, it should be explained why the answers are what they are.
 * If someone could help me with some templates I would be very grateful. I've been through the meta page on it a few times and still don't understand it. The use of templates for showing Journal and Ledger entries would save a lot of time in preparing examples. Here's a tentative list of what templates could be put to use:
 * Journals:
 * (see the Journals templates section below)
 * Ledgers:
 * Ledger Header - Account Name & Number and column headings
 * Ledger Entry - Date, Comment, PR, Debit amount, Credit amount, balance. Fields included as applicable.

I guess that's about all I wanted to say, so now it's time to get down to writing. As content is completed, it should be moved to the chapter pages and replaced with a link to those pages; once chapters 1-4 are mostly complete the main page should take over the role of a chapter index. Xerol 04:42, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I am a bit concerned about the date of this entry. It's been almost four years.  Have you dropped the idea?  If so, I wonder if anyone else wants to pick it up.fcoulter (talk) 20:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Journals templates
moved to Accounting/Templates

Organization
I added Accounting/Quick_Reference and Accounting/Templates here, instead of on the bookshelf page- please revert this if they don't belong to this book. DettoAltrimenti 00:51, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

''Why is this section called "Accountancy" rather than "Accounting"? I'm a CPA, CISA, and MA and in all my years of study, practice (public and private) and in adjunct teaching, have only heard the term "Accountancy" used by the upper levels of academia administration. The rest of the civilized (English speaking) world refers to the study of this profession “Accounting”. In order to make this WikiBook a useful one, I would strongly suggest that the conventions of the real-world be used in this case. The purpose of Wikiversity in general, and this Wikibook in specific, is not to promote the speech used in the upper levels of academia, rather to educate those who are new to the field of Accounting. (For case in point, in every job posting in this field, within the US, the posting is for “Accounting,” not “Accountancy.”)''


 * Exactly. What you do for a living is "Accounting". However this book is not about what you do for a living. This is a book about the fundamental concepts behind it that you need to know before once can practice "Accounting". Accountancy is the study of Accounting. Thus Accountancy is far more appropriate for an explanitory text. But please, rather than fight over nunance, with your credentials, please contribute content. Be Bold! --Mig77 15:11, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * In general though, many people haven't heard of the term Accountancy, and might be confused or turned off by the title of the book. Accountancy might be the study of Accounting, but aren't most people who read this book going to be Accounting students, studying the practices and formalities of accounting, as opposed to the theory behind it all? I've only ever heard that term a few times and if an accountant has never heard of it, maybe we should call the book Accounting so that it's more clear. Most Accounting textbooks that I've ever encountered don't use the term Accounting and the wikipedia article gives different definitions than yours. senanatrim 06:28, 21 November 2007 (UTC)


 * My Masters degree says Accountancy. My spell checker thinks my resume is misspelled.  Take that however you like.fcoulter (talk) 19:57, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
I'd like to thank Wikibooks for this wikibook. I couldn't find any accountancy books in my school library (lol) Ecapa (talk) 04:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)Ecapa

Financial Statements
Income statement- is a financial statement that reports a company's financial performance over a specific accounting period. Balance sheet is a statement of the assets, liabilities, and capital of a business Stockholders Equity - represents the equity stake currently held on the books by a company's equity investors.