The Purpose of Accounting

Essay by Pokrant0930University, Bachelor'sA+, April 2010

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The Purpose for Accounting

According to BusinessWeek.com, accounting and finance play a huge role in every business. Without the proper accounting practices, a business cannot truly understand the financial position of the company and how to position it for the future. In order for any business or entity to be successful it starts with understanding and knowing the purpose and meaning of accounting. Accounting and financial statements are the means for communicating the numbers of an organization (eBook Collection, Accounting in Action, Chapter 1, p 2).

Accounting is the system that provides useful financial information for a business (BusinessWeek.com, 2009). It is vital to the success of any business for its employees to understand the numbers and understand what is happening financially within the business. Accounting consists of three basic activities, "it identifies, records, and communicates the economic events of an organization to interested users." (eBook Collection, Accounting in Action, Chapter 1, p 4.)

In order to identify with the economic events of an organization, a company will select the economic events that are specifically related to its business. After the economic events of the Texas A&M System are identified for each department, the campus records the events in order to provide a history of the financial activities that have taken place. The recording consists of keeping an organized, sequential listing of events that will be measured in dollars and cents. When recording this information, the accounting department for Texas A&M will classify and summarize the economic events identified.

Texas A&M's accounting department will then communicate the information by providing accounting reports to the decision makers and its users. A few of the most important users and decision makers that will review these accounting reports is the campus Executive Vice President of Finance & Administration, the Senior Associate Vice...