Accounting as a Language of Business

Accounting: The Language of Business:

Accounting has been called the language of business. Throughout our early education we learned the vocabulary and other basic elements of the English language, or another language, so that we would be able to communicate effectively. The purpose is the same for accounting. Most of you will not become accountants. You may be self-employed or employed by others in a business (a manager, banker, or investor) and will use accounting information, whether you know it or not.

In order to understand and to use accounting information most effectively, you must have a solid grounding in its fundamentals. The finer points of accounting are things that you will probably never encounter in your business transactions, but you will know how to read those important financial statements and how to effectively use the material that will emanate from your computerized financial system.

Accounting information has been useful for hundreds of years. The double-entry framework was first described in a book written by Luca Pacioli, a fifteenth-century Italian monk and mathematician, although its origins can be traced back another 300 years. The formal structure for processing financial transactions is at least 700 years old.