Talk:Accountancy

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

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.

Contents 1 Expanding into a full book 2 Journals templates 3 Organization 4 Thanks

[edit] Expanding into a full book

(Previous content removed; issues have mostly been addressed.)

• 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.

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.
2. Accounts - Explanation of types of accounts, and an introduction to Journalizing.
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.
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.)
5. The Accounting Cycle - Adjustments and Closing entries, and a comprehensive review up to this point.
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.
7. Credit Transactions - Reviews recievables/payables, introduces credit terms(in preparation for the next chapter - just an overview), and subsidiary ledgers.
8. Merchandising Activities - Sales/COGS transactions, Merchandise valuation methods (FIFO, LIFO, etc.), and special journals.

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.

• 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.

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.

• 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.

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.

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)

[edit] Journals templates

moved to Accounting/Templates

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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