The Goodleap Business Model
When investors look at the list of companies that have become unicorns in the recent past, Goodleap tends to stand out. The company has stayed under the radar for a long period of time. It is only in 2021 that the company left the stealth mode and started publicizing some aspects of its business. It […]
Herd Mentality Bias
Human beings are social animals. For centuries, our brains have been wired to conform to the actions of the larger group. This is because, in the old times, a person’s probability of survival would be negatively impacted if they were not in a group. This herding mentality may have helped our forefathers survive in the […]
Disadvantages of Defined Contribution Pension Plans
Defined contribution plans have come under a lot of criticism because of the various disadvantages that they have. Many of these plans have been viewed as a covert way to absolve the government of any responsibility related to the retirement of its citizens. Given the many other socio-economic factors which are at play, defined contribution […]
Estimating Project Cash Flows: Part 1
Prima facie, capital budgeting may seem like a very simple task. After all, it has just 3 steps. The first is to find the cash flows, the second is to find the appropriate discount rate that represents the time value and riskiness of those cash flows and the third step is to use both these […]
Sweeping – Meaning, Need and Types
We are already aware that commercial banks are offering several liquidity management services to their clients. In the previous article, we have already studied how notional pooling can help corporations better manage their liquidity. However, notional pooling is not the only option. In fact, there is another option called “sweeping” which is used by the […]
Accounting has been hailed by many as the “language of business”. There are many quotations like “A pen is mightier than the sword but no match for the accountant” by Jonathan Glancey which tell us about the power and importance of accounting.
The text book definition of accounting states that it includes recording, summarizing, reporting and analyzing financial data.
Let us try and understand the components of accounting to understand what it really means:
The primary function of accounting is to make records of all the transactions that the firm enters into.
Recognizing what qualifies as a transaction and making a record of the same is called bookkeeping.
Bookkeeping is narrower in scope than accounting and concerns only the recording part. For the purpose of recording, accountants maintain a set of books. Their procedures are very systematic. Nowadays, computers have been deployed to automatically account for transactions as they happen.
Recording for transactions creates raw data. Pages and pages of raw data are of little use to an organization for decision making. For this reason, accountants classify data into categories. These categories are defined in the chart of accounts. As and when transactions occur, two things happen, firstly an individual record is made and secondly the summary record is updated.
For instance a sale to Mr. X for Rs 100 would appear as:
Management is answerable to the investors about the company’s state of affairs. The owners need to be periodically updated about the operations that are being financed with their money. For this reason, there are periodic reports which are sent to them.
Usually the frequency of these reports is quarterly and there is one annual report which summarizes the performance of all four quarters. Reporting is usually done in the form of financial statements. These financial statements are regulated by government bodies to ensure that there is no misleading financial reporting.
Lastly, accounting entails conducting an analysis of the results. After results have been summarized and reported, meaningful conclusions need to be drawn.
Management must find out its positive and negative points. Accounting helps in doing so by means of comparison. It is common practice to compare profits, cash, sales, assets, etc with each other to analyze the performance of the business.
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An Overview of Contracts and Why They are Important to Business and Society
February 12, 2025
