Define Accounting and Bookkeeping and compare and contrast the role of Essay

Define Accounting and Bookkeeping and compare and contrast the role of Professional Accountants and Bookkeepers - Essay Example The book also described the use of journals and ledgers. Accountancy contained two parts bookkeeping and accounting. Both became useful to the merchants and the professional from time to time. It plays an important function in recording the financial transaction of an organization. It provides information to a whole range of users. The essay elaborates basics of accountancy and the use of accountancy in different areas of management by the accountants and the bookkeepers (Gazely and Lambert, 2006) Accounting and Bookkeeping Accountancy does the task of maintaining records and it also involves in preparation of financial reports for a particular business. It also involves in auditing those reports. It is concerned with the knowledge, practices and the principles of accounting for meeting the general needs of a running business. According to Kohler â€Å"Accountancy refers to the entire body of the theory and practices of accounting† (A. Goyal and M. Goyal, 2009). The term accou ntancy can be divided into two parts: Accounting and Bookkeeping. Accounting Accounting basically deals with the provision or measurement of assurance of the financial information that are used by a number of users such as the lenders, investors, managers and the decision makers of a particular organization (Fitzpatrick, 2010). According to American Accounting Association it is â€Å"a process of identifying, measuring and communicating information to permit judgment and decisions by the users† (Khan and Jain, 2007). It also measures the different economic activities which are responsible for affecting both the inflow and outflow of the resources of the economy. It serves as a language to the business as it communicates its results to the business (Hugh and Hobbs, 2005). There are certain characteristics of accounting which are as follows: Accounting concerns of only the financial transactions and are expressed in terms of money. The information which cannot be expressed in t erm of money cannot be included in the books of accounts. After the identification of the financial information these are recorded in the books of accounts. Journal is known as the primary book of accounts in which all the information is recorded at first. When information are vast then the book of accounts is sub-divided into a number of various books such as Sales book, Purchase Book, Sales Return Books, Cash Book and many more (Stittle and Wearing, 2008) After recording of the financial data, they are classified into different groups of data which are of same nature. The book in which these are recorded are known as the Ledger. After classifying the data, they are summarized and presented in a manner that is understood by a layman also. This process is concerned with the preparation of Profit and loss account, trial balance and balance sheet. The information thus got from the summarization of the data is to be analysed to get a result. Ratio analysis is a very common tool for ana lysis and thus it helps both the management and the external users to take their decisions. The result thus communicates some information to the interested party and they can take an appropriate decision (Warren, 2009). There are different types of accounting which are as follows: Financial accounting concentrates on only those transactions that have already occurred in the past. The main aim of this type of accounting is to