Category: Accounting

What Exactly Is Accounting Anyway

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Anyone who’s worked in an office at some point or another has had to go to accounting. They’re the people who pay and send out the bills that keep the business running. They do a lot more than that, though. Sometimes referred to as “bean counters” they also keep their eye on profits, costs and losses. Unless you’re running your own business and acting as your own accountant, you’d have no way of knowing just how profitable – or not – your business is without some form of accounting.

No matter what business you’re in, even if all you do is balance a checkbook, that’s still accounting. It’s part of even a kid’s life. Saving an allowance, spending it all at once – these are accounting principles.

What are some other businesses where accounting is critical? Well, farmers need to follow careful accounting procedures. Many of them run their farms year to year by taking loans to plant the crops. If it’s a good year, a profitable one, then they can pay off their loan; if not, they might have to carry the loan over, and accrue more interest charges.

Every business and every individual needs to have some kind of accounting system in their lives. Otherwise, the finances can get away from them, they don’t know what they’ve spent, or whether they can expect a profit or a loss from their business. Staying on top of accounting, whether it’s for a multi-billion dollar business or for a personal checking account is a necessary activity on a daily basis if you’re smart. Not doing so can mean anything from a bounced check or posting a loss to a company’s shareholders. Both scenarios can be equally devastating.

Accounting is basically information, and this information is published periodically in business as a profit and loss statement, or an income statement.

Keep Accounting Nightmares Out of Your Life

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In our recent post, we talked about all of the things lawyers have to do to keep their accounts squeaky clean: >

Deposit (most) retainers into a trust account.

Bill their clients, then apply all or some of the retainer funds against the bill.

Mark the invoice as paid, then transfer the applicable money from trust account to operating account.

Update the retainer balance accordingly.

In real life, here is what that looks like:

To see how closely related law firm billing and trust accounting are; take a look at this simple example:

1. On January 1, you opened a new case with an initial retainer of $5,000. You deposited the $5,000 in your attorney trust account. Your trust books need to reflect a retainer balance of $5,000.
2. In January, you record $2,700 in time and expenses. You charge it to the matter.

3. On January 31, your books need to reflect the following: $2,700 for the unbilled balance, and $5,000 for the retainer balance.
4. On February 1, you generate an invoice. This converts unbilled time and expenses to billed. Your books now need to reflect $0 for the unbilled balance, moving the $2,700 into the unpaid balance column. The retainer balance is still $5,000.
5. The same day, you pay the invoice from the client’s retainer balance. Your books now need to reflect the unbilled balance as $0, the unpaid balance as $0, and retainer balance as $2,300. You can make a deposit of $2,300 from your trust account to your operating account.

Skip one of these steps, and you are stuck playing detective.

Say you apply a retainer in trust to a specific invoice, but forget to write the check in your trust bookkeeping system. You’ll have an invoice marked paid, but no funds drawn. You might not even notice your own mistake. Imagine the headache involved in tracing this mistake.

Now multiply that scenario by a few occurrences. For each mistake? At best, you’ve got an administrative nightmare on your hands. At worst, you’re under billing-or in inadvertent violation of an ethical regulation.

Accounting Courses In Australia Preparing For The Winds Of Change

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There are plenty of study accounting programs available in educational institutes across Australia. These programs provide the students with the opportunities, which are necessary to forge a successful career in accounting. The beauty of these programs is that the education provided through these programs is applicable in a wide variety of professional situations. Of late a number of educational organizations have come up in Australia,which are dealing with accounting and providing a number of programs to train students in this career.

The courses and programs, being provided by these organizations, are being developed so that needs of the international and domestic market could be satiated. These needs are changing each and every day and this is placing a lot of strain on the accounting professionals. As a result of these ever increasing and ever changing demands the accounting people are being forced to update themselves. Now with the advent of a plethora of accounting programs and courses in various Australian universities and educational organizations, grounds are being made to make sure that the students are well prepared to take up the challenges, that present themselves throughout the career of an accountant, and solve them with elan.

As far as the accounting programs in Australia are concerned, the students are provided with the opportunity to choose their favorite fields. After choosing the students are then provided with the training that is ideal with respect to their chosen areas of accounting. Some of the areas touched in these programs are bookkeeping and spreadsheets. Issues like membership of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICCA) and registration for the post of Certified Practicing Accountant (CPA) are also taken notice of.

The courses and programs offered cover a wide variety of subjects like certificates, masters degrees, associate diplomas, master of business administration programs, advanced diplomas, doctorate studies and bachelors degrees. Both theoretical and practical programs are provided but these provisions depend on the particularities of the program like level of study and other requirements. The modern approaches to accounting are also taken into cognizance in the accounting programs, provided by the universities and other educational institutes of Australia.

Benefits Of Having Decentralized Accounting Software For Ngosnonprofits

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Accounting software for NGOs/Nonprofits should be deployable under various configurations. For NGOs that operate in multiple countries in which the network environment may not support high speed remote access, stability is unreliable, or the cost of the network is prohibitive, a decentralized model is the appropriate solution.

A decentralized model provides following benefits:

Independent operation each country/region can operate independently. This guarantees that the operations of the country/region are able to continue regardless of external factors. Each country/region can utilize functionality that has been developed and maintained to support government regulations, statutory reporting, and local business processes. In addition, local languages can be provided to complete the user experience.

Global business processes with centralized management all business processes and setup can be managed based on a global perspective. NGOs are able to develop business processes that span the entire organization around the globe. Business rules enforce the type of data that is being monitored and tracked, while providing each country and region the flexibility to manage locally. This provides the consistent, timely, and accurate accounting for NGOs.

HQ database This model provides for an unlimited number of NGOs/Non Profits (or independent entities requiring separate financial records) to be stored within the database. The HQ database contains all companies along with country/region view. All business objects are managed in this database and are pushed to the country/region databases. The object overview below describes this in more detail.

Country Office The country/region database contains all NGOs/NonProfits related to the country/region. All transactional data is processed in this database for each of the companies supported in the country/region. Data is posted to ledger tables, and supplemental tables are updated to support business processes in the country/region. Although there are global business rules to control the type of data being processed, each country/region operates independently. Transactional data is replicated to the HQ database on a user-defined basis to support HQ global reporting.

Field Office Access to the country/region companies from the field office is largely dependent on network infrastructure. The frequency and amount of data that can be replicated to both HQ and Country Offices is determined by network bandwidth and latency. However, it is important to note that this can be a completely disconnected model where field office personnel are able to perform the critical operations of managing expenditures within a structured environment under organizational controls.

Online Accounting For NGOs/Nonprofits This software provides a deployment model that allows an organization to give access to limited type of users. The users will be able to interact with the accounting software for specific functions. This deployment model can be implemented at HQ or at each Country office. It requires a user to have a computer with a current web browser and internet access.

Career in Accounting

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Making a successful career in his life is the ultimate aim of a student. From the starting of his education, a student starts planning about his career goals and aims he need to achieve. Medical, engineering, doctors, scientists, biotechnologists, etc are the careers which one can opt for post completing his studies in the science field. After science, be it medical or non- medical, commerce is the field which attracts students. Many students have been seen opting for career in accounting or commerce after passing their secondary school examinations.

Career in accounting or finance becomes the goal for the student’s pursuing studies in the field of sciences. The different fields to which the commerce subject is divided are: 1.)Accounting. 2.)Banking. 3.)Finance. 4.)Computers. 5.)Business studies. 6.)Economics.

After completing his senior secondary education, commerce students mainly opt for business management, computers or accountancy courses as their graduation subjects. The most popular course which has become the career goal for almost every commerce students these days is career in accountancy. Accounting Job involves the responsibility of maintaining the accounts of the organisation, analysing it and further adding on to the economic development of the company.

The three different fields or courses available in the field of accountancy are:

1.)CA- Charted Accountancy 2.)ICWAI- Cost Accountancy 3.)CS- Company Secretary

All these courses are provided by special institutes and have their individual regulatory bodies, governing the course structure and further career developments in the respective fields.

Charted Accountancy: Charted accountant is the person responsible for few of the most important functions required to run a smooth functioning of the organisation in term of its monetary funds and finances like accountancy, auditing, taxation, etc. The Institute of Charted Accountants of India (ICAI) is the organisation responsible for the regulation of charted accountancy profession in India. The students for becoming a member of this institute, has to go through a series of examinations, appearing before which, he has to register himself with the statutory body of ICAI. There are three levels of CA examination, i.e. CPT- Common Proficiency Test, PCC- Professional Competence Course, and then is the final exam, which has to be cleared, after which the student becomes a members a member of ICAI and can practise his profession in charted accountancy. The minimum time required to do this entire course is 3.5 to 4 years, which is in very rare cases, because the examination is very tough and it consumes years to pass one level.

Cost Accountancy: In this field the person responsible, is required to manage the cost related functions of the company in an organised way, he needs to collect, analyse and assemble all the cost related departments. He also needs to check, the utilisation of the funds is done in the right manner and in the productive direction. The institute responsible for application of the job responsibilities of cost accountancy in the country is The institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India. For taking admission in this course, students needs to clear three levels of examination, conducted by ICWAI, and registration for examination can be done after passing the senior secondary exam. The students having passed out all the three levels of ICWAI exam, other than working as cost accountant in public and private organisations, can also opt for working as a consultant in the field of finance management.

Company Secretary: This is another field which can be opted by the accounts or commerce students after passing their 12th exams. It is regulated by the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, which takes examination of the students applying for the course of CS, there are three levels for the same, after which the student can apply for CS in different companies and industries. As the name suggests, the job is not of a clerical or secretarial job, the CS is responsible for all the legal, board, trustee, managerial and corporate level decisions are taken with reference to the Company Secretary.