Читать книгу Accounting For Dummies - John A. Tracy - Страница 12

You probably fall in with the majority of people who have preconceptions about accounting — which in fact may be way off the mark. For instance, most people think that you have to be good at math to understand accounting. Accounting deals with numbers, that’s for sure, but by no means does it require calculus or other math — just arithmetic. Accountants make calculations and compare numbers. That’s about it. We’ve never heard of an accountant taking the first derivative of an accounting equation or doing any other calculus computation.

The problem is that many people — perhaps even you — are number-phobic. They avoid anything to do with digits. They wouldn’t think of doing their annual income tax return. Accountants deal in numbers. But be aware that every accounting number has a name or label attached. There are no naked numbers in accounting. The basic unit of information in accounting is the account, which consists of both

 A name

 Its amount or value

The vocabulary of accounting consists of accounts. Accountants communicate in terms of accounts.

Another preconception is that accountants have their heads buried in a torrent of details. Accountants have no choice; they have to be detail-oriented. At the same time, they have to see how the details fit into the overall scheme of things. The avalanche of details is condensed into accounting reports that disclose relatively few aggregate accounts. One reason for learning accounting is to understand what these collective accounts include.