Talk:Accounting/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Invitation to participate in the Accountancy Task Force

If you are interested in working in collaboration with Wikipedia members on improving the article Accountancy, you will be pleased to hear that the Accountancy task force has been set up and is seeking participants who can assist with the article's overhaul. Perhaps you would like to provide verifiable content on this subject matter, in which case your input could be invaluable. Alternatively we are also seeking participants who can help with the systematic sorting of related accountancy articles into meaningful categories, an activity that does not require undertaking research but will nonetheless help improve the quality of the article's links. Either way, the task force would like to hear from you! --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:31, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Practioners of Accountancy

I have elimated the paragraph on "Practioners of Accountancy", which seems to be comprised of original research. To replace it[1], I have inserted a paragraph on the origin of the term Accountant (citing Francis William Pixely, admittedly an old source), which I feel provides more encyclopedic coverage of the subject of this article compared with a random selection from the List of accountancy bodies. --Gavin Collins (talk) 15:44, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Standalone links

I have removed all the random and arbitrary standalone links, both internal and external, that have until now blighted this article. In themeselves, they add nothing of encylopedic value to the article, since they are devoid of the commentary, context, criticism or analysis on their own.

Standalone external links to commercial websites that are not used as the basis for citation should be removed as soon as they are added, as they are likely to in contravention of WP:SPAM.

Standalone internal links should also be removed, as there is an extensive web of links to other topics are already contained in the body of the article itself. Standalone links are not necessary, as this article forms part of an extensive web of categories (see WP:CATEGORY for more information). Stand alone links are not appropriate in accordance with Wikipedia's policy on internal links (see WP:LINKFARM) Such links may be more appropriate in sub-topics of Accountancy. For a list of sub-topics, follow the link to Category:Accountancy at the bottom of this page, or use the search tool by inserting Category:Accountancy. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:34, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

OK...but now the article is not an article about accountancy anymore...it's just the history of accountancy with a section on Enron. Surely, at the very least, this article should be a signpost to other related articles? AnthonyUK (talk) 09:59, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

My view is that signposting to other articles does not really add any encyclopedic content per se. If an accounting term is not mentioned in the body of the article, then that may indicate that there is a content gap, and that new content is needed. I agree with you that this article needs new content, but it needs to be sourced; simply adding links is not a substitute for this in my view. However, I think we do not want to go back to having a list of links to other articles just for the sake of it, as we don't want to turn this page into "List of accounting topics" (which is probably redundant given that all the articles listed in it are all categorised) nor a WP:LINKFARM. The other problem related to having lists of links is that it encourages futher but unrelated links to be added, which blights the article by placing undue weight on other topics. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:34, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Accountancy

.,is accountancy a good course!?., is it hard!?., or not?., what are the things involve in accounting!?., —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.54.67.90 (talk) 04:13, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

If you like math as a subject, you will like accountancy. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:35, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

GAAP

I updated the discussion on GAAP to be more world viewed. Previously it made it sound as though GAAP was in the US.Jaromhuff21 (talk) 18:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

confusing defintion

In the Document's head section

Accounting has also been defined by the AICPA as "The art of recording, classifying, and summarizing in a significant manner and in terms of money, transactions and events which are, in part at least, of financial character, and interpreting the results thereof."[2]

Is the quote badly written or incorrectly quoted?

Slawkenbergius (talk) 23:54, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

It makes sense to me, but it maybe possible that you are right and its meaning is not clear because this definiton is used slightly out of context. Which part do you not understand? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:32, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Accounting in Ancient India

I have removed the following unsourced content:

Kautilya has detailed on importance of accounting in creation of ethical society in his book arthashastra He viewed philosophy and political science as separate disciplines but considered accounting an integral part of economics. He specified a very broad scope for accounting and considered explanation and prediction as its proper objectives. Kautilya developed bookkeeping rules to record and classify economic data, emphasized the critical role of independent periodic audits and proposed the establishment of two important but separate offices--the Treasurer and Comptroller-Auditor, to increase accountability, specialization, and above all to reduce the scope for conflicts of interest. He also linked the successful enforcement of rules and regulations to their clarity, consistency and completeness. Kautilya believed that such measures were necessary but not sufficient to eliminate fraudulent accounting. He also emphasized the role of ethics, considering ethical values as the glue which binds society and promotes economic development.

If anyone can source these statements, perhaps we can include it within this article. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:43, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Accounting scandals: Lehman Brothers

I have removed the following content on the grounds that it is not sourced:

Another notable scandal involves former global financial services firm Lehman Brothers and its secret usage of controversal Repo 105. Jenner & Block, a court-appointed examiner reported that Lehman never publicly disclosed its use of Repo 105 transactions, its accounting treatment for these transactions, the considerable escalation of its total Repo 105 usage in late 2007 and into 2008, or the material impact these transactions had on the firm’s publicly reported net leverage ratio. According to former Global Financial Controller Martin Kelly, a careful review of Lehman’s Forms 10‐K and 10‐Q would not reveal Lehman’s use of Repo 105 transactions. Lehman failed to disclose its Repo 105 practice even though Kelly believed “that the only purpose or motive for the transactions was reduction in balance sheet”; felt that “there was no substance to the transactions”; and expressed concerns with Lehman’s Repo 105 program to two consecutive Lehman Chief Financial Officers – Erin Callan and Ian Lowitt – advising them that the lack of economic substance to Repo 105 transactions meant “reputational risk” to Lehman if the firm’s use of the transactions became known to the public. In addition to its material omissions, Lehman affirmatively misrepresented in its financial statements that the firm treated all repo transactions as financing transactions – i.e., not sales – for financial reporting purposes.

Although this reads like reasonable summary, the allegations against officers of Lehman Brothers require need to be backed up, as do the "quotations". --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 03:45, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Copyright problem

This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 12:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry guys,you'll find a lot of the history section has disappeared. The sources are sound - if anyone wants to rewrite based on sources then the sources are still in the article history. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:01, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Accountancy in a knowledge based economy

I removed the following text:

The development of a knowledge-based economy requires new formulations of accounting, i.e. knowledge accountancy. The accountancy of knowledge is the process of formulating, classifying and communicating data relating to individuals and organizations associated with the knowledge economy. This accountancy of knowledge requires its own conceptual apparatus and array of bookkeeping terms, e.g. personal knowledge balance sheets and knowledge-based balance sheets. Personal knowledge balance sheets track the value of knowledge worker competencies while knowledge-based balance sheets show, in monetary terms, the knowledge resources under the control of a business entity.

Whilst I think that this article could usefully include a section criticising the shortcomings of traditional accounting - I remember there was a paragraph on social accounting that did exactly that. I don't believe that extending accountancy to include "knowledge based balance sheets" is useful, and the idea of valuing knowledge in monetary terms is nonsensical and, indeed, specifically prohibited by accounting standards in all jurisdictions that I am aware of. AnthonyUK (talk) 19:32, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Caption blunder

Big errors in caption, due to shallowness of multi-copying between sources... The painting has 0.001% chance to be by its traditional attribution, Jacopo de' Barbari, and the open book is by Euclid. --'''Attilios''' (talk) 21:47, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Archive 1

Archive 2

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Accounting/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Your articles, such as this one would be much more useful to more people if they contained references to texts.209.173.38.37 (talk) 18:00, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Last edited at 02:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC). Substituted at 20:14, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Mathematical Science

I removed the reference to accountancy as a branch of mathematical science because accountancy is primarily concerned with recording already determined numbers in journal entries rather than with arithmetical calculations so I would not consider accoutancy to be part of math. I have read in the history of wikipedia's mathematics article although not in the current version a section titled "what mathematics is not" and it said accountancy is not math using a similiar argument stating accountants are more concerned with journal entries than arithmetical manipulation. --67.52.196.217 (talk) 10:37, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

meh, I wouldn't necessarily agree with your reasons but I agree with your conclusion. AnthonyUK (talk) 13:38, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I do not agree. Accounting involves journal entries I agree but it also involves basic mathematics and arithmatic. Accountancy if you are unsure - was defined originally as being a method of counting. Then comes accruals and prepayments whereby a paper based document will state the owing from one human to another. Accounting is merely adding up what is owed to where, and will eventually demonstrate the method of payment. The fact that the final stages of preparing accounts involves journal entries in order to juggle the figures to portray a fair trade system, does not mean accounting is just that. Accounting is an art, such is poetry. Poetry is not just English Language for example but it is the finesse of the words that create power. Merely journaling the poem by rearranging the lines would not state that the poem has been written therefore why is accounting not a branch of scientific mathematics. We are science and maths is maths.

(SAMWAM88 (talk) 16:31, 5 August 2012 (UTC))

Well, I disagree that math is actually a science as it's a priori rather than a posteriori - fundamental espistomological distinction in the western canon. However, accounting is certainly not mathematics. Even if it heavily involves mathematics (which it doesn't really), it is not the reasoning and deduction by formal proofs fundamental numerical facts from a set of axioms. That's maybe a poor definition of math - I am not a math scientist, after all. But accounting is a professional study. It does not reveal fundamental truths or theories about the world. It may incorporate information from fields that study those things, but it is not the study of those things. Gn341ram (talk) 04:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Mathematics is nothing but a set of ethics. Helal Arif (talk) 19:33, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

What is revolution Umar ansari (talk) 01:23, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Definition of Accounting

ACCOUNTING(ACCOUNTANCY)is the SCIENCE OF 1. COUNTING, 2. MEASURING, AND 3. PRICING GOODS AND/OR SERVICES AT EVERY HUMAN ACTIVITY. FURTHERMORE, ACCOUNTING(ACCOUNTANCY)IS A QUANTITATIVE SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLE. IMPORTANTANT OBSERVATIONS: 1. DEFINITELY, ACCOUNTING IS NOT AN ART. The art refers to sense of joy. Perhaps the writer/speaker wanted to mean strategy. 2. The work of recording human transactions everywhere and at every time, is BOOKKEEPING. 3. A science involves principles(the first/pristine truths) Zetetics 4. An art involves human invention(Heuristics) and creativity(Sinectics) 5. A principle is the first truth underlying knowledge 6. An invention may involve application of certain principles 7. A principle is an everlasting and universal(ecumenic) truth 8. A human invention is a short-term and local-scope truth 9. Accounting relates to Finance 10. Bookkeeping relates to the job of recording and classifying moneyworth(crematistic-meaning) goods and /or services

For future discussion, a forum and/or symposia might be organized

CPC José Ramírez Carbonel

Buenos Aires, Maarch 18, 2012 10:42am Sunday — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.190.119.145 (talk) 13:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

The World English Dictionary defines art as "(2) the exercise of human skill, (10) method, facility, or knack, and (11) the system of rules or principles governing a particular human activity." Under these definitions, accountancy qualifies as an art. Science is defined as "(1) the systematic study of the nature and behavior of the material and physical universe, based on observation, experiment, and measurement, and the formulation of laws to describe these facts in general terms" and "(4)any body of knowledge organized in a systematic manner." Accountancy is not based on immutable physical laws but on tradition, laws, regulatory requirements and culture and thus only qualifies as a science because the knowledge is systematically organized. RM MARTIN (talk) 15:17, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

There are figurative senses of the terms art and science. But I think in this context science refers to the academic discipline and family-resemblance of methods meant to obtain objective, factual information about the world. Art is (generally speaking; humanities majors love debating this one) the creation of something for aesthetic value (or perhaps social value or something similar - again, goddamned humanities majors and their wishy-washing fuzziness of thought). The words of other meanings in different contexts of course. When someone says "X is an art and a science" they mean that it requires both precision and judgment. There seems to be a modern trend of calling any new discipline [blank]-science to mean "study of" instead of adding the suffix of -ology so you wind up with political science which is essentially a humanity and computer science which involves tons of science, but is more about technology (which is of course the practical, real-world application of science, but in and of itself science). As a discipline and a subject of study, accounting is neither art nor science. It's more like funerary studies (actually called funeral science at my college, funnily enough) or construction management or auto body. Despite the fact that there is quite a bit of room to debate what is and isn't science, accounting doesn't even meet a more progressive, inclusive definition in my opinion. People like to compete for the title of "science" because they think it adds an heir of legitimacy to their subject, but I think that's misguided. Gn341ram (talk) 19:03, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

History section

I've shifted the History section to its own page with significant restructuring, addition of information, and removal of unsourced information, because the section was previously excessively long. Most of the information was unchanged, though, because the section's quality was already pretty high before the move. -Well-rested^Talk 10:45, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Why is Accounting in the internet user account management there?

The RFC 2975 - Internet Engineering Task Force, definitions of accounting is obviously for internal user account use in internet systems like SMTP and POP-servers. see: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2975.txt

I really think it is such a special topic it has nothing to do with the genral subject of accounting to do? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.247.9.228 (talk) 18:47, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this has nothing to do with accountancy in the context of this article. It should be a hatnote redirect, but I don't know what article to point it to. Suggestions? Ivanvector (talk) 15:08, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Internet Engineering Task Force? Well-rested^Talk 15:25, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

I deleted the section since it is off-topic. Since there is no article about this either, a hat note isn't needed. Maybe we could add a line in the dab page. Bhny (talk) 15:54, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Funny, I was just going to suggest deleting the dab page. It only has two links, one to this article, and one to Accountant which is linked from this article anyway. Ivanvector (talk) 17:56, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Old edits by user Gavin.collins

I came across an old discussion on WP:AN regarding the behaviour of a contributor to this article, Gavin.collins, which resulted in a permanent site-wide ban. One of the issues discussed was non-constructive removal of content from articles and replacing with copyvio material, which was subsequently itself removed. Accountancy was one of the articles mentioned. It might benefit us to review the user's edits and determine if any useful information was removed. Sorry if this comes across as assuming bad faith. Ivanvector (talk) 18:07, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Improving Accountancy

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who thinks this article could use some serious improvement. I've been doing some significant restructuring of the article, including reworking the lede to a more normal size and shifting the previously-massive History section to its own page (with a lot of additional information).

However, there's still a lot more work to be done, perhaps the most imoportant of which is the addition of information about accounting: it's strange that the accountancy article doesn't have sections describing financial accounting and management accounting, for example.

In the meantime, listing some issues about this article so as to stimulate discussion:

• Should the article's title be "Accountancy" or "Accounting"?
• How should topics like financial accounting, management accounting, and auditing be incorporated? E.g. do we create a section like "Fields of accounting" (like in Mathematics) or give each topic its own section (like in Economics)?
• Are any other topics (e.g. Accounting education, Accounting firms) important enough to have a section here? Should any section in the article not be here?

- Well-rested^Talk 10:43, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for getting this started, Well-rested! It looks like the issues you posted are likely to set off some lively debate, so if you don't mind I went ahead and added a new section below regarding the article title. Ivanvector (talk) 17:56, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Adding a quick note that I'm going to proceed with adding the various topics of accounting under "Fields of accounting", since I've found other sources using that, and since it's already the terminology used in the main accounting template. -Well-rested^Talk 00:33, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Changes done (for now). Added sections on financial accounting, management accounting and auditing, with links to the respective main pages. I'll make further improvements in the coming days. - Well-rested^Talk 02:15, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Article title

Old discussion

Article title discussion (mainly from 2009)

Why is the less common term 'accountancy' used rather than the more common 'accounting'? Google is usually a suitable metric of common usage and accounting is used twice as often worldwide, than the term accountancy. A simple search shows 11,800,000 hits for accountancy and 23,400,000 for accounting. A British variant that is less common should be noted, but not presumed to be the right way over the more common form.JascalX (talk) 17:15, 18 April 2009 (UTC) The difference between accounting and accountancy is probably to do with the evolution of the subject. In the same way bookkeeping evolved from record keeping, and accounting evolved from bookkeeping, accountancy as we know it today has evolved from accounting. I can't cite any sources to back this up at the moment, so this is just my view. As regards the view that accountancy is a British variant of word accounting, I do not have any sources to support or disprove this view, but I can tell you that one of the the first magazines published by a professional accounting organsiation is the Journal of Accountancy which was first published in the US in 1905. This suggests to me that the term accountancy may well of orginated in the US, rather than the UK. If you can cite sources to support or disprove any of these points, your research efforts would be most welcome. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:46, 18 April 2009 (UTC) Thank you for the response Gavin. I looked around the various dictionaries online and found that 3 of the 5 listed it as a British variant, two did not specify and one of the two non-specific listed the origin year as 1859. Etymology aside, I do not believe the term is very common outside the UK or former UK Commonwealth and appears to not be the more common term worldwide. This is based on simple search engine hits using each term alone or in combination with related termsJascalX (talk) 03:00, 19 April 2009 (UTC). Strange, I came to a different conclusion. As you know, the Journal of Accountancy is published by American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and although I am not familiar with how they rank relative in terms of profession associations, their membership seems reasonably large and their history goes back quite a while[2]. I would conclude from this evidence that the term accountancy is used often in the US, even if only amoung memembers of the profession. However, from what little I have read in accademic papers[3][4] and books[5], the term accountancy is used in the US quite often, and even some accademic departments use the term in their name & courses too[6]. You might be right about accountancy being a British origin, but then again you might be wrong, for it is the Merriman-Webster online dictionary that suggests the origin of the word dates back to 1859[7]. It is interesting that an American dictionary should know this. Perhaps the word accountancy is American after all? Only further research will reveal this. Overall, I disagree with your conclusion that it is a term used only in the UK. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:14, 19 April 2009 (UTC) Leaving aside the question of history, it seems clear that "accountancy" is a narrower and less commonly used term than "accounting". "Accountancy" refers much more specifically to the profession, and not to the whole field, which involves economics and statistics as well as accountancy in the professional sense. A change of name would be desirable.JQ (talk) 08:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC) The evidence I have cited suggests otherwise. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC) Could you spell this evidence out? You've shown that the term "accountancy" may not be UK-specific, but your own comments such as "used quite often, and even [by] some academic departments" support the view that "accounting" is more standard. Most of the subcategories of Category:Accountancy use "accounting" in their names, and many would make little sense otherwise.JQ (talk) 20:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC) I have no evidence to demonstrate which term is "standard". But if you can come up with a source that says accounting is the standard term, then please let us know. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:31, 3 May 2009 (UTC) Just a few interesting tidbits. The Wikipedia article traffic statistics for April 2009 stated that Accounting was visited 54,746 times during the month (link) while Accountancy had 22,230 visits (link). This would lead me to believe that the majority of readers are typing in accounting, and being redirected to the accountancy page. In addition, a portion of the 22,230 visits could be attributed to links from templates, other articles, etc. (of course the same could be said that some articles are still linking to accounting instead of accountancy). I'm not arguing for either term, but just thought I'd point this out if it assists in the decision of moving back or not. (As a side note, my degree says Accounting on it). --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 09:24, 3 May 2009 (UTC) More similar evidence. "accounting discipline" gets about 20 000 ghits, "accountancy discipline" <1000. A Google search for dictionary+accountancy produces, as its top hits nearly all refs to "dictionary of accounting" and similar. The first I can find ofr "accountancy" refers to "the art or practice of an accountant" which sounds about right to me. That is, "accountancy" refers very narrowly to the job/profession, and "accounting" covers all aspects of the field.JQ (talk) 09:45, 3 May 2009 (UTC) Outside the dictionary reference, we don't have very much in the way of sources for this term. Accountancy may be a term that refers to a methodology, a body of learning, profession depending on how it is used. Books such as the History of Accountancy in the USA [8] suggest that it is used in both the US and the UK. However the real question is what is the difference between "Accountancy" and "Accounting"? I still cannot answer this fundamental question but I have found a suitable definition for accountancy: "Accountancy is the art of communicating financial information about a business entity to users such as shareholders and managers. The communication is generally in the form of financial statements that show in money terms that show the economic reources under the control of management. The art lies in selecting the information that is relevant to the user and is reliable." Taken from "Financial accounting and reporting" (Elliot, Barry & Elliot, Jamie, FT Prentice Hall, London 2004, p.3), quoted in Corporate Reporting and Company Law By Charlotte Villiers. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC) I know this is an old discussion, and I don't have any sources to cite, but this is how I've been given to understand it. Accounting is a verb, and Accountancy is a noun. They're effectively different forms of the same word rather than one being a variation of the other. I studied accountancy, so that I could be an accountant and thus engage in accounting. I view accountancy as the noun which describes the concept, whereas accounting describes the act/application of that concept. As a side note, my degree says my major was accountancy with a specialty of public accounting. AaronMP84 (talk) 07:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC) Merriam-Webster defines accountancy as "the profession or practice of accounting." Thus, accounting is the subject or academic discipline and accountancy is the actual job of applying that subject. That is, it's like the difference between bicycles and bicycling (maybe not the absolute best analogy, but it's what I cam up with). Given this definition, I don't think it's right to equate accounting and accountancy as purely regional variants. Obviously the terms can be used interchangeably most of the time and that does indeed follow geographic lines. But, there is a difference. Although, Merriam-Webster is an American dictionary, so maybe whatever they use across the pond will define accounting as "the profession or practice of accountancy" and then I won't know what my opinion is anymore. Gn341ram (talk) 04:37, 22 November 2013 (UTC) I think it's a little misleading to try to differentiate the two terms. I'm not a linguist, but for all intents and purposes the two words seem pretty much interchangeable. A good reference point might be how universities name their accounting departments; both versions are used by different universities: "Department of Accounting", "Department of Accountancy", "School of Accounting" and "School of Accountancy" are all in use. -Well-restedTalk 08:01, 26 December 2013 (UTC) I guess I'll add this here. Accountancy sounds really odd to me ears, perhaps because I'm an American, so I don't know how to edit this article to make it sound better. However, switching between the terms accounting and accountancy according to whichever country the editor is from sounds weird to me. I think we should stick to one term of the other throughout the entire article after acknowledging variations for stylistic consistency. I guess we should stick with "accountancy" since that's the main title, but I don't want to alter anything because I'm not sure on the usage exactly. Gn341ram (talk) 19:13, 6 December 2013 (UTC) I'm personally more used to "accounting" too, but as of now I'm not sure if we have a good reason to change the title unless we have more current information on which wording is more in use, etc (WP: CRITERIA). I don't think there's any particular reason to change every reference of accounting (accountancy) to accountancy (accounting) either. The article already makes clear that the two terms are interchangeable, so use of either word probably won't confuse anyone. -Well-restedTalk 08:11, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Current discussion

This has been discussed at length before; if you're an editor who's new to this discussion, I encourage you to have a look at the excellent arguments from 2009 and 2012 posted earlier on this talk page.

On "Accountancy" vs "Accounting" I have no preference between the terms in practice. In Canada I encounter "accounting" much more often but that obviously doesn't present a worldwide view. Previous discussions have not shown any obvious consensus for changing the name to "accounting". After the 2009 discussion, it looks like this article was replaced with a redirect to Accounting (the reverse of the current situation) based on one editor who was in favour of keeping "accountancy" being permanently site-banned, although that had very little to do with this article. The redirect was reverted, and here we are. The accountancy template was also renamed to Accounting at that time, so we now have a template which is called "accounting" in wikilinks but has the text "accountancy" at the top.

One other point worth noting is that most other articles being watched by the Accountancy Taskforce use "accounting" rather than "accountancy" (examples: Management accounting, Financial accounting, Accounting period) and either don't mention accountancy at all, or use "accounting or accountancy" like we do here. This does show a broad consensus for using "accounting" rather than "accountancy", and therefore we should rename the article, unless other editors feel strongly otherwise.

Whichever title is chosen going forward, we need to use it consistently throughout the article - get rid of all the "accountancy or accounting" text. All that's needed is a note at the very top of the article, like what's there now. Ivanvector (talk) 17:57, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty to shift the old discussion into a collapseybox above. There appears to be two strands of thought in the old discussion: the first considers the two terms interchangeable and therefore considers the deciding factor to be how common each term is used, while the second favors one or the other term based on the idea that the two terms are not interchangeable (e.g. have different definitions).

To help discussion along, I think it's pretty clear that the two words are interchangeable as words that indicate what the entirety of accounting/accountancy is about, so we should be focussing on considerations like how common either term is. Just to leave some evidence that the two are interchangeable:

* Universities: Both words have been used to describe the accounting/accountancy departments in unversities, and there does not even appear to be a preference based on geography. E.g. "accounting":LSE (UK), UT Austin (US), NUS (Singapore), Bocconi (Italy), Michigan (US); and "accountancy": UIUC (US), Glasgow (UK), Notre Dame (US)SMU (Singapore), CUHK (Hong Kong).

* Academic journals: Similarly, academic journals have used either words in their titles. E.g. The Accounting Review (by the American Accounting Association), and the Journal of Accountancy (by AICPA).

TL;DR: since both terms are interchangeable for describing the topic, I think the consideration here shouldn't be about the definition of each term, but rather on other guidelines in WP:TITLE, e.g. how common the words are used (WP:COMMONNAME).

- Well-rested^Talk 00:14, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Which term is more commonly used?

Just adding some data regarding which term is more commonly used (see WP:COMMONNAME). It does look like "accounting" is a lot more commonly-used than accountancy:

• From Google trends (here) set to worldwide from 2004 to present:
  • Google searches: "accounting" has much greater search interest than "accountancy" over the past years, and consistently >10 times since 2011.
  • Related searches: "accounting" is strongly related (>= 70) to many accounting searches, especially "financial accounting", "accounting software", "accounting jobs", "business accounting" and, crucially, "what is accounting", while "accountancy" isn't strongly related to much (only one, "board of accountancy" is >= 70).
  • Regional interest (cities): the data does suggest a UK/US divide, but it looks like the US and the UK both use either term; cities in Asia appear to use both terms (for what it's worth, the blue circles seem generally darker for "accounting")
• From Google searches ("accountancy" and "accounting", with quotations, set to any time):
  • News: "accounting" has 173,000 hits and "accountancy" has 7,310 hits.
  • Any: "accounting" has 104 million hits and "accountancy" has 9 million hits
• In accounting academia:
  • Top-ranking journal names: Top journals (by various rankings) always use "accounting" (see BYU's list of top ranked journals, journals used in the Financial Times research rankings, and Google Scholar's top publications in accounting and taxation)
  • Academic journal names: In general, academic journals seem to predominantly use "accounting". This study of accounting journals (see Exhibit 1) lists 20 journals with "accounting" in their names and only 1 journal with "accountancy" in its name.

-Well-rested^Talk 02:30, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

It seems pretty clear from Well-rested's research that "accounting" is the more common term in widespread usage, and the name of the article should change to reflect that. Given that this is a CD Selection article, it's important to get this right. I think it would be appropriate to post a notice about this discussion on the Accountancy Taskforce page to recruit additional editors to this discussion and establish a broad consensus for changing the article title. For the record, I am in support of changing the name to Accounting. Ivanvector (talk) 04:06, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

I've left notes on both the Business and Accountancy Task Force talk pages. Given the data I too agree that the article's title should be changed to "Accounting", but let's see if we can get broader consensus before making any changes.-Well-rested^Talk 05:14, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Quick comment after looking up the dictionary definitions of "accounting" and "accountancy". In both British and American English, the financial reporting (i.e. what the article is about) is referred to as "accounting". The difference between "accounting" and "accountancy" only arises when we are talking about the job of being an accountant. I've added the details to the article under the etymology section.-Well-rested^Talk 06:15, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

A new sidebar

Hey guys. I've prepared a new version of the accounting sidebar over over at my user page; it's transcluded on the right. This version follows the formatting of the finance sidebar, and I made some changes to the articles etc displayed—there are some pretty unimportant articles on the current sidebar, and also some very important articles are missing.

I'm planning to implement this new sidebar in a day or two (I still need to write up the documentation etc) if there are no objections, particularly regarding the overall formatting.

-Well-rested^Talk 15:47, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I've implemented the change. For reference, the old version is available at my user page here.-Well-rested^Talk 03:41, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Looks good! I was going to suggest making a bottom-of-the-page navbox since there are a lot of links and a lot of useful information, and making the sidebar only hold the most important articles. I made a mockup of a navbox here - basically I just copied yours and reformatted it, I hope you don't mind. I don't know which articles would be considered important (maybe go by the project's rating scale?) Ivanvector (talk) 19:43, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. The sidebar can be restricted to just the most important articles, while more details can go into the navbox, like how they do it over at economics. And yeah the importance rating scale would probably be a good gauge of importance.-Well-rested^Talk 01:28, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Under Key concepts you are missing, e.g., unit of account, money, legal tender and capital maintenance.

There is no such thing as "major fields" in accounting. Auditing is not accounting as such.

There is also no such thing as "key accounts" in accounting in general.

Under "financial statements": balance sheet and income statement are not used in IFRS anymore. (who put together your list??)

Retained earnings is not a financial statement!!

XBRL is not a financial statement!!

Bookkeeping is the same as accounting.

Auditing is not accounting as such.

I strongly suggest you restate the previous version of the template.

CameraWallet (talk) 17:23, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi CameraWallet! My changes to the template was largely to update the formatting and to make it similar to other templates like the finance one, so a lot of the issues you are bringing up are also present in the old template, e.g. in the old template, XBRL and retained earnings are both under "Financial Statements".

So I completely agree with you that some changes need to be made, and I'll make the changes ASAP.

To answer some of your specific points:

• Retained earnings and XBRL are not part of the financial statements: You are absolutely correct. I will change these ASAP.
• Missing concepts: You're right. I'll add some of your suggestions.
• Fields of accounting: Yeah, I was thinking that "field" might not be the best word to use (although some sources I found use the word). Maybe "areas of accounting"?
• Bookkeeping: Bookkeeping is actually not the same as accounting; it is only one part of the broader accounting function, i.e. bookkeeping is a subset of accounting. (See the main accounting article for the reference on bookkeeping.)

- Well-rested^Talk 17:42, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Ok I've implemented most of your suggestions. Thanks!

And by the way, since you're interested in accounting, you can actually join the Business Wikiproject. They have a lot of tasks in need of help from editors, and the Accountancy taskforce has a lot of pages that need improvement. Just a suggestion. :)

-Well-rested^Talk 17:56, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

The statements should follow the common names, rather than the IFRS-defined names, to guarantee a worldwide POV. Balance sheet may be called "Statement of Financial Position" per IFRS, but this is not standard everywhere, for example. Also, some companies do prepare a statement of retained earnings or statement of changes in equity, but I don't believe they are considered a standard financial statement. Ivanvector (talk) 19:19, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the terminology used for each of the statements is one of those (many) things that is not going to satisfy everyone. There's definitely an argument for using "balance sheet", "income statement", etc, since you still hear those a lot (although I do hear "P&L" more than "income statement" in some places), but at the same time there's the argument that we're all converging to IFRS so maybe we should be using their terminology; plus it's "international" and hence could be seen as reflecting a global POV. I'm on the fence for this one, so if anyone wants to change it, do feel free to do so. -Well-rested^Talk 19:47, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

You're probably right that it'll be difficult to get every user to agree. I would say to go with the current names of the articles (Balance sheet, Income statement, etc.) which seems to be how you have them now, at least in the template at right. If there is consensus to change to the more formal IFRS names, then change the template at that time. The problem is that the names in the Financial statements article are already updated to the IFRS names, and the links point to redirects to the common names as they are now. I think maybe the proper titles for those articles is something that will need to be resolved separately. Ivanvector (talk) 19:28, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Ok, that's fine by me. -Well-rested^Talk 02:01, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Page move from Accountancy to Accounting

I'm listing in detail here to reasons for the page move from Accountancy to Accounting. I don't think this will be a very contentious move because of the discussion above and because there simply doesn't seem to be much interest in this issue even after informing the business wikiproject and the task force, but I thought it would be good to list the reasons here for future editors. -Well-rested^Talk 07:45, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Previous discussions

• Older discussion mainly from 2009
• Recent discussion from late 2013 to early 2014
• Requests for interested parties to join: at the Wikiproject and the task force

Reasons for move

Quick comment: just by the definition of the word, the profession of accounting/accountancy, should be distinct from (and in this case a subset of) accounting/accountancy itself, like how the legal profession is not the legal system.

The title should indicate what the subject is about (WP:TITLE)

1. Dictionaries: In most dictionary sources, "accounting" describes the act or system of recording and reporting financials, and can also refer to the job or profession of being an accountant; while "accountancy" describes only the job or profession of being an accountant.
   1. Dictionary listings for "accounting": Cambridge Business English, Cambridge British English, Merriam-Webster,Collins English, Oxford Dictionaries.
   2. Dictionary listings for "accountancy": Cambridge Business English, Cambridge British English, Merriam-Webster, Collins English,Oxford Dictionaries.
2. Book titles: Book titles overwhelmingly use "accounting" rather than "accountancy"
   1. Google books: 128,000 title hits for "accounting" and 7,000 title hits for "accountancy"
3. Journal titles: Prominent accounting/accountancy journal titles overwhelmingly use "accounting" rather than "accountancy".
   1. Sources: Financial Times' top journal used in computing business school rankings, Google Scholar's top publications in Accounting & Taxation, BYU's top 6 journals, research paper on accounting journals.

The name more commonly used in reliable sources is preferred (WP:COMMONNAME)

1. News sources: "Accounting" is mentioned far more frequently than "accountancy"
   1. Google news: As of the time of writing, "accounting" has 172,000 news hits and "accountancy" has 6,530 news hits
2. Encylopedias: Encylopedias use "accounting" and not "accountancy"
   1. Global Encyclopædia Britannica: "accounting" describes the topic, and [http://global.britannica.com/search?query=accountancy no encylopedia entry for "accountancy"]
   2. Encyclopedia.com: "accounting" describes the topic, and no encylopedia entry for "accountancy"
3. Book mentions: "accounting" is mentioned much more frequently in books
   1. Google books: As of the time of writing, "accounting" has 39.4 million hits and "accountancy" has 225,000 hits.
4. Other sources
   1. Currently-used references: Of the 55 references currently used in this article, 27 contain the word "accounting" while 7 contain the word "accountancy".

Readers should be likely to look for the title (WP:CRITERIA)

1. Google search: "Accounting" has far greater search interest and hits on Google
   1. Google hits: As of the time of writing, "accounting" has 102 million hits and "accountancy" has 9 million hits
   2. Google trends (interest from 2004): "Accounting" has almost 10 times the search interest of "accountancy"
   3. Google trends (related searches from 2004): "Accounting" is strongly related to more accounting/accountancy search topics than "accountancy"

The title should be one that editors naturally use to link to the article (WP:CRITERIA)

1. Wikipedia usage: "Accounting" is much more commonly used in Wikipedia titles
   1. Wikipedia titles search: As of the time of writing, 225 content pages have the word "accounting" in their titles, and 32 content pages have the word "accountancy" in their titles

Other comments

I don't think this page move will entail changing every single article title using "accountancy" to using "accounting". The Manual of Style should be applied to each article on a case-by-case basis.

- Well-rested^Talk 07:45, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

It is a fact that the term "accounting" has over the last few years been losing ground to "financial reporting". Accounting and financial reporting is regarded as the same concept. Authors and especially international accounting standard-setters and national accounting standard-setters and accounting authorities use the two terms as inter-changeable. Should we thus rather be pro-active and move from "accountancy" straight to "financial reporting", or is it more reasonable to give "accounting" a decade or two before the change from "accounting" to "financial reporting"? CameraWallet (talk) 19:05, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Do you have any sources for that? I strongly disagree. Financial reporting is an important facet of accounting, but they are not interchangeable terms. Accounting also involves budgeting, forecasting, capital management, business performance analysis, resource planning, problem solving, assurance ... it is a much wider field than just financial reporting. Ivanvector (talk) 19:19, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The perfect source for the fact that "financial reporting" is directly interchangeable for "accounting" is the new title of international accounting standards. The original international accounting standards are still named International Accounting Standards. New ones are now named International Financial Reporting Standards, i.e., a direct substitute of the term "accounting" with "financial reporting": the perfect source. IFRSs now include the older IASs and the newer IFRSs. You could not ask for a better source.CameraWallet (talk) 19:57, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I think you're reading too much into the meaning of that change. IFRS are standards for financial reporting, but they are limited to just that narrow aspect of the much broader accounting function. IFRS (and IAS, and the many disparate GAAPs) provide no guidance whatsoever on those broader accounting functions, they only ensure that the information provided by accountants to other users of the information follow established, consistent standards. That is a very important part of accounting(/accountancy) but it is not the whole picture. Ivanvector (talk) 21:00, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Ivanvector here. IFRS/GAAP generally don't apply to management accounting, for example, but management accounting is clearly part of accounting. And anyway, article titles are based on the term that is currently most commonly used, not the term that may be most commonly used in future. -Well-rested^Talk 04:24, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Well-rested that "article titles are based on the term that is currently most commonly used". Google search for "accounting" 112 000 000. Google search for "financial reporting" 289 000 000. That settles it then: We have to use "financial reporting" since it has more than double the number of Google search results. CameraWallet (talk) 22:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

"...Article titles are based on the term that is currently most commonly used" to describe the topic. "Financial reporting" does not describe the topic of this article, it is only one aspect of the broad field of accounting. As an example of what I mean, "orchard" returns 27.6M ghits, but "apple fruit" returns 163M ghits, but we're not going to rename orchard -> apple on this basis because orchards do more than just grow apples. "Apple" does not describe the topic of orchard, in very much the same way as "financial reporting" does not describe the topic of this article. In the abstract, it might be worthwhile to create an article on "financial reporting" and have it linked from account[ing|ancy] as a "main article" from a reporting sub-header, but as I just checked, financial reporting is already a redirect to financial statement so this is basically moot. Ivanvector (talk) 22:58, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

CameraWallet, just to give a helpful example, the most searched-for movie in 2013 was Man of Steel, but that does not mean that every movie article on Wikipedia should be renamed to "Man of Steel", because different movies generally have different articles, and the title must reflect what the article is about. In this case, financial reporting is not the same as accounting. A good example (perhaps not the best example but it should suffice) is that there are separate standards for financial reporting and for auditing, e.g. International Financial Reporting Standards vs International Standards on Auditing. -Well-rested^Talk 07:15, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Let me confess: I prefer "accounting". However, I was just alerting you to the fact that "accounting" and "financial reporting" are being used as interchangeable, especially as far as IFRS discussion papers, exposure drafts, IFRIC IASB Interpretations Committee work, etc., etc. is concerned. It is now considered "old-fashioned" to use "accounting" as the all-encompassing term. It is now generally accepted to use the term "financial reporting" as the all encompassing term. (In my opinion auditing is not accounting. Then writing is also accounting and the numbering system is also accounting if auditing were to be considered accounting.) I use the term "accounting" or "accounting / financial reporting" in my writings about accounting / financial reporting. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia: a source of the status quo, a reflection of what is out there, of what is actually happening. I am strongly of the opinion that the two terms are being used as interchangeable with "financial reporting" being a full length ahead of "accounting". Accounting / financial reporting articles on Wikipedia are, in my opinion, so-so - certainly not of excellent quality compared to the quality of US GAAP and IFRS. I was trying to correct a little bit of this weak image of accounting / financial reporting articles on Wikipedia. So, "accounting" is fine with me, but, I honestly do not think that is actually a true encyclopedic reflection of the status quo. CameraWallet (talk) 15:31, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah ok. I suspected that you were fixating on "financial reporting" partly because you like a good debate. (I think most of us secretly do!) But anyway just to continue the debate, I think most sources would consider auditing as part of accounting. E.g. it's taught as part of accounting degrees, accounting academics routinely list it as an area of accounting research, it shows up in accounting textbooks, just to name a few examples. However auditing can be seen as a different concept from financial reporting: financial reporting is the work of producing the financial reports, and auditing is the assurance about the financial reports, and hence there are financial reporting standards, and auditing standards. And the IFRS etc could be focussing on the term "financial reporting" simply because they deal with the financial reporting standards. But anyway, even if it really is the case that some other term is replacing "accounting" (hypothetically!), the correct title would still be "accounting" until the other term becomes the most commonly-used phrase used to describe the entire topic/subject of accounting. -Well-rested^Talk 03:49, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move per request. As noted, this appears to be the common name and to the extent an English variation issue is implicated, this falls under WP:COMMONALITY.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

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Accountancy → Accounting – Requesting move over redirect. Reasons listed in great detail at Talk:Accountancy#Page move from Accountancy to Accounting. To summarize, "accounting" better reflects what the article is about (WP:TITLE), it is the far more common name (WP:COMMONNAME), and it is the far more commonly looked-for term (WP:CRITERIA). The move appears uncontroversial because there has been discussion at the talk page regarding reasons for the move, and there have been no additional discussants even after informally requesting for comments at the relevant Wikiproject and Task Force over a week ago. Well-rested^Talk 07:59, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support as requester. :) -Well-rested^Talk 16:53, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support as I've said before, per WP:COMMONNAME. "Accounting" appears to be the much more common term in worldwide general usage, with "accountancy" limited to within Britain and some former Commonwealth countries, as well as academia. My only concern with this was that it had previously been controversial, but that now seems to have been one single editor's personal vendetta, and they are now permanently blocked partly as a result of that crusade. Ivanvector (talk) 17:01, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
• Comment isn't this an WP:ENGVAR issue? -- 70.50.148.122 (talk) 03:35, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Not quite, at least not based on previous discussion. Rather than being two differing national usages, this is a globally standard usage ("accounting") versus usage that seems common only in British English and in academia ("accountancy"). Therefore this doesn't quite fall under WP:ENGVAR, but WP:COMMONALITY would seem to prefer the global common usage, and COMMONNAME certainly does. Ivanvector (talk) 04:35, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Additional comment: I don't think "accountancy" is in much use in academia at all. The academic accounting journal titles overwhelmingly use "accounting". Also, regarding ENGVAR, from the dictionary sources: in British English, both terms are in use with "accountancy" referring to the job or profession of being an accountant, a narrower definition than what the article is about. (In American English, "accounting" also refers to the profession.) -Well-rested^Talk 04:44, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support for several reasons--you could even include WP:CONCISE if you REALLY wanted Red Slash 06:38, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support. "Accountancy" as the subject/topic name isn't wrong. In my experience, although one might use "accountancy" in a more general sense interchangeably with "accounting", usage of "accounting" is definitely more common. Accountants and other professionals tend to refer to "the accounting profession", "accounting treatment", "accounting standards" and "no accounting for taste" ;-) .-- Ohc ^¡digame! 02:36, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Color Accounting/Colour Accounting

I am new to editing Wikipedia and would like some help with adding a sub-article on Color Accounting.

Color Accounting is a proprietary system of representing accounting graphically and with the logical use of color. It's principle use is in education, at high school and university level, and in corporate training. Since it is a proprietary system, I'm conscious not to be seen to be promoting a commercial product as advertising. However there are verifiable facts that I believe would be interesting/valid/useful to list, like patents granted, trademarks registered, description of the system's functionality, history of the system's development, commercial users, published books and products, and possibly some biographic information of the inventors.

I'm thinking I'd like to show a draft submission to an experienced editor for input on structure, contents, suitability, where to locate the article etc. I'd appreciate any offers of help.

Plframpton (talk) 20:02, 7 June 2014 (UTC) plframpton June 7, 2014

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 external links on Accounting. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20130819184954/http://acpa.org.uk/criteria-for-entry.aspx to http://www.acpa.org.uk/criteria-for-entry.aspx
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20131011082948/http://www.icaew.com:80/en/qualifications-and-programmes/better-qualified/ to http://www.icaew.com/en/qualifications-and-programmes/better-qualified/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the —^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 09:41, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Me Myself and I

Hi ! I am Anmalylika from Rizal — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anmalylika (talk • contribs) 00:36, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Staff accountant

"Staff accountant" is just an accountant by another name. See Talk:Staff accountant. 331dot (talk) 03:19, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Since there was no discussion, I added the info to Accountant#Non-certified accountants, and boldly changed the staff accountant stub to a redirect. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 12:48, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Ancient pronunciation

On 2018-09-01 the section on "Etymology" included the following: 'The word "accountant" is derived from the French word compter, which is also derived from the Italian and Latin word computare. The word was formerly written in English as "accomptant", but in process of time the word, which was always pronounced by dropping the "p", became gradually changed both in pronunciation and in orthography to its present form.[26]'

QUESTION: How can anyone possibly know ancient pronunciations, e.g., 'which was always pronounced by dropping the "p"'?

I changed this to the following:

The word "accountant" is derived from the French word compter, which is also derived from the Italian and Latin word computare. The word was formerly written in English as "accomptant", but in process of time the "p" was dropped and the orthography evolved to its present form.[26]

DavidMCEddy (talk) 05:41, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

If your reason for the edit is purely "How can anyone possibly know ..." then your edit seems to be based purely on your disbelief. I do know that, in general, reconstructing old _and_ ancient pronunciations is possible, though the means may astonish. (e.g. using old songs which were known to rhyme and scan and thus seeing that "back then" the words were said/sung quite differently from nowadays).

For reference, this same cite and quote is used at wikt:accountant. And which has a link to the archive.org scan of that book, where you can see the quote yourself.

As always, if you can find and cite other knowledgeable published opinions it will be appreciated. Otherwise, at Wikipedia we give deference to citable opinion. Shenme (talk) 06:06, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the mention that wikt:accountant "has a link to the archive.org scan of the book". I looked at that.

To say that 'it was always pronounced by dropping the "p"' suggests that the word has existed through eternity -- or at least as long as language or the "English" language. But which version of English?

The reference mentions Latin and French, so presumably the word come to England and to English with the Norman conquest, and the "p" may already have been dropped from Latin in the evolution of the French and Norman languages before 1066.

However that book is hardly a scholarly treatise on linguistics: It could be cited with authority on recommended accounting practices a hundred year ago, but I wouldn't take it as authoritative on a matter like this.

And I appreciate your comment about "reconstructing old _and_ ancient pronunciations" from old songs and poems, etc. However, there are different dialects of any modern language, and just because a word was pronounced a certain way by the author of a particular song or poem does not mean it was pronounced that way by all.

But I don't feel a need to push this any further.

I'd be pleased to get your feedback on the another matter, which I will put in a new section. DavidMCEddy (talk) 07:45, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Accounting as a percent of total employment in the US

Would you support adding to this article a figure showing "Accountants and auditors" as a percent of total employment in the US, 1910-2000? Such a plot is available as Figure 3b in Wyatt and Hecker (2006). That was published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the US federal government, which should mean that it is in the public domain. I plan to enter the complete citation into Wikidata / Wikicite, then extract the image from the pdf and upload it to Wikimedia Commons. If they don't accept that, I will read the numbers from that chart manually and recreate it myself, so it's my own art work. Then they will accept it. I think this plot says something important about the evolution of accountancy as part of the modern economy, though I'm not sure entirely what.

I also plan to include a brief discussion and comparison of that plot with current BLS data on accountants and auditors and "bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks", partly to make the point that what one counts as an "accountant" is a matter of definition that evolves over time -- and BLS seems to use different definitions at different times. I don't know what definition of "Accountants and auditors" was used for that plot in Wyatt and Hecker (2006): Did the percentage of total labor devoted to bookkeeping in the US increase by a factor of 14 between 1910 and 2000? I don't know the answer to that, and I don't know if I'll find it in Wyatt and Hecker. I may write them and ask.

I trust you would support the addition of such a plot and a brief discussion of these questions of definition? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 07:45, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Accountants and auditors as a percent of the US labor force, 1850 - 2016, using primarily data from IPUMS, Wikidata Q5973128.

I updated the analysis using primarily the source used by Wyatt and Hecker and posted my plot of that to Wikimedia Commons; see the image included here. I also documented carefully exactly what I did so others can replicate, modifly or update it at will. DavidMCEddy (talk) 04:49, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Request semi-protection

This article has received 10 different edits that were obvious vandalism from, if I counted correctly, 9 different IP addresses since 2018-07-23. The most recent one added the word, "bye" at the end of a section

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Accounting&diff=next&oldid=859041887).

On July 23, someone identified with an IP address inserted 5 apostrphes in a note and several other curious Mediawiki markup language changes. Please check yourself.

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:27, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: requests for increases to the page protection level should be made at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Saucy^{[talk – contribs]} 04:04, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

what is book keeping

बुक कीपिंग इस अन आर्ट ऑफ रेकॉर्डिंग ट्रांसकशन्स इन या सिस्टिमॅटिक मन्नेर — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.91.221.49 (talk) 06:31, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Political campaign accounting

Does this warrant its own section? What distinguishes it as a separate branch of accounting rather than an application of accounting, like “film/movie accounting”, “charity accounting”, “government accounting” or similar? Toby64 (talk) 11:37, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Economic management sciences

Because I want to know batter 41.116.148.250 (talk) 12:20, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Definition

Englesh 2401:4900:3158:1765:0:6A:D851:8E01 (talk) 05:42, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

accounting

What is accounting 27.63.17.167 (talk) 10:13, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Question about Relationship between management accounting and accounting

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Hello. The article claims that management accounting involves analysis. However, accounting as a broader discipline has been described as a field related to record-keeping, without mentioning the presence of analysis. Users are asking me to provide a credible source that mentions the presence of analysis in accounting, and when I sent the sources, they denied them. Now my question is this: when the article mentions that management accounting involves analysis, why is this not accepted, and why are users asking me to prove to them that accounting includes analysis? If management accounting involves analysis, isn't it clear that accounting itself also includes analysis? Management accounting is a part of accounting. If management accounting involves analysis, then accounting as a whole does too, and this article claims that management accounting involves analysis. Wikinegarr (talk) 14:01, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

It's just a simple question. Can someone Awnser it? Wikinegarr (talk) 14:03, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

It was never stated that accounting doesn't involve analysis. However, the word "analysis" is not a core part of any textbook definition of accounting, nor is it such an important function overall that it warrants a mention in the first sentence. Analysis is mentioned in the context of managerial accounting in the introductory section, but in the same way that the disciplines of managerial accounting and financial accounting aren't mentioned in the first sentence, the first sentence does not need to contain every verb for actions that accountants do. —C.Fred (talk) 01:07, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

It was stated that accounting doesn't involve analysis. Because recording,processing and measuring aren't about analysis and the main definition of accounting in the lead is this:"Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the process of recording and processing information about economic entities, such as businesses and corporations. Accounting measures the results of an organization's economic activities". so we need to put the word of analysis between them and if can't we have to replace these words with other words that cover the concept of analysis. Wikinegarr (talk) 12:30, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

the first sentence does not need to contain every verb for actions that accountants do but need to contain verbs that their meaning cover all actions of accountants. Like this: Accounting is the process of preparing and interpreting of financial information and reports. Wikinegarr (talk) 16:13, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Lead sentence

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The lead sentence must be concise and as clear as possible. Recently there have been repeated attempts to add the word 'analyzing' to the opening sentence. The addition clutters up the opening with wording that is redundant both in terms of what is already in the opening sentence and will the explicit mention of analysis in paragraph two. Its addition is not an improvement to the article, thus I have reverted. MrOllie (talk) 16:06, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Prioritizing the correct meaning. This meaning is not correct. If we don't add analytics, we've lost the meaning of bookkeeping to the audience. The most important difference between bookkeeping and accounting is this.Bookkeeping is the first part of the accounting process, so the work of a bookkeeper and accountant often overlaps. Bookkeeping focuses on recording and organising financial data, while accounting is the interpretation and presentation of that data. We need to make clear the difference between them. Wikinegarr (talk) 21:08, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

The word analysis does not exist in the main definition of accounting at the beginning of the article, and according to some common misconceptions that accounting does not focus on analysis and its exclusive focus on recording information and not analyzing them, the presence of the word analysis at the beginning of the article is not sabotage or disruptive action. Not that this user insists on dealing with it. I tried to invite the user to reach a consensus through various methods, but he did not respond to me and did not cooperate. Adding the word analysis to the main definition of accounting at the beginning of the article is not a problem. Please register this issue as a consensus and add the word analysis to the article. thanks Wikinegarr (talk) 21:10, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Are you contributing via Google translate or something? Sentences like The most important difference between bookkeeping and sensitivity is this don't make any sense. MrOllie (talk) 23:25, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I meanThe most important difference between bookkeeping and accounting Wikinegarr (talk) 06:12, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Could you awnser this please? @MrOllie we need to make clear th difference between bookkeeping and accounting in the lead. The difference between them is that accounting involves analysis but bookkeeping just involves recording and processing. Bookkeeping is a part of accounting but not all of it. It's not a big problem. Is it really hard for us to make their difference clear by adding just one word of analysis? I am sure what i wrote now is completely understandable. Wikinegarr (talk) 09:06, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

The article does do that, in the second paragraph. To quote: Management accounting focuses on the measurement, analysis and reporting of information for internal use by management to enhance business operations. The recording of financial transactions, so that summaries of the financials may be presented in financial reports, is known as bookkeeping, of which double-entry bookkeeping is the most common system.

I have been doing you the courtesy of answering your questions, are you going to answer mine? I'll repeat it here: are you using translation software? MrOllie (talk) 11:35, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@MrOllie no i am not Wikinegarr (talk) 20:31, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@MrOllie why you don't let the lead to do that and make their difference clear? Wikinegarr (talk) 20:32, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

What I just quoted is already in the lead. It is already doing it. We don't need to redundantly do it twice. MrOllie (talk) 20:33, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@MrOllie the lead just talk about recording, processing and measuring. there is no word here with the meaning of analytics and in this way, the lead describes bookkeeping,not accounting. Wikinegarr (talk) 20:35, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, there is. The ones I quoted in green a couple messages ago. MrOllie (talk) 20:36, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@MrOllie you talked about other parts of articles. i am talking about the lead . why you don't let the article to make their difference clear? what is it's problem? what problem is with making their difference clear in the lead? Wikinegarr (talk) 20:46, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@MrOllie can i talk about their difference after the lead? Wikinegarr (talk) 20:48, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

The article already discusses it, and then there are links to other articles containing more information. I don't know what you'd add to the article that isn't already here. MrOllie (talk) 20:57, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

i can't find it. Tell me the word that you mean. Wikinegarr (talk) 20:40, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Exactly the words I quoted a few messages above. They appear in the second paragraph of the lead. MrOllie (talk) 20:52, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@MrOllie i konw but it's not describing accounting m it's talking about management accounting. the article is like management accounting involves analysis but accounting not. it's like management accounting is something out of accounting. but management accounting is subfield of accounting. when management accounting involves it, it's impossible for accounting to not involve the analysis. would you please let me delete that from second paragraph and rewrite it in a better way in main part of lead in first paragraph? i am asking you this because main sentence of lead is very more important than other parts. we need to make the difference between accounting and bookkeeping clear in their main definition. check the main sentence of the lead in bookkeeping article. there is no serious difference between that and accounting. so please let the word of analysis show itself in the main definition of accounting in the lead. thanks Wikinegarr (talk) 21:04, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikinegarr It is in the lead already. It does not need to go into the first sentence. From MOS:FIRST: "Do not overload the first sentence by describing everything notable about the subject. Instead, spread the relevant information out over the entire lead." —C.Fred (talk) 21:06, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@C.Fred as it's an important point i request to delete it from that part and move it in first sentence. in this way we can't say the word of analysis is repeated. i am asking this because it's important and it needs to be in first sentence. Wikinegarr (talk) 21:10, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

It's much better where it is, where it can be explained with proper weight and context. MrOllie (talk) 21:11, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

it's not. because most of people just read the main sentence of lead and do not pay attention to rest of it. Main sentence of lead should be complete. Now it's incomplete. Why you don't let it to be complete?At least i suggest to write words that can inconve all of recording and analytics related things.like this: Accounting provides financial information about an organization's economic activities to aid decision-making. Wikinegarr (talk) 21:21, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

The opening sentence must be kept short. If it were 'complete' it would be as long as the article is. MrOllie (talk) 21:59, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes it must be short but not in a way that make a wrong meaning. Now it's wrong because it's definition of bookkeeping,not accounting.Be sure that just one word of analysis will not make that an article! Wikinegarr (talk) 08:53, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikinegarr I have to agree with MrOllie, especially since looking at the body of the article, the place I see "analysis" come up is in reference to managerial accounting. —C.Fred (talk) 21:17, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

• IMO, the current intro does a good job of defining the subject. Here's a literal textbook definition, since I have one on my desk: "Accounting is the information system that measures business activities, processes the information into reports, and communicates the results to decision makers." Nowhere in the first few paragraphs of the book does the word "analysis" come up, nor is it in the AAA's Pathways Vision Model—and when it does come up, it's in the context of analyzing a transaction to determine how to record it, i.e., to prepare the journal entry, which a bookkeeper could do! Another quote worth noting: "According to Robert Half's 2022 Salary Guide, the top in-demand positions that rely on accounting skills are controllers, financial analysts, tax accountants, auditors, cost accountants, accounting clerks/bookkeepers, and business systems analysts."^{[emphasis added]} So, bookkeeper can be viewed as synonymous with accounting clerk. I don't see the need for a distinction as holding water, either overall or with respect to needing "analysis" in the definition. —C.Fred (talk) 20:37, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

  view my source about analysis in accounting Wikinegarr (talk) 20:41, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

  Needles is out of print, so I can't get to a desk copy. —C.Fred (talk) 20:50, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

hello guys. it's my last request:

I am reaching out to you once again, with a final request regarding the initial sentence in the "Accounting" article on Wikipedia. After reflecting on our previous conversations and reexamining the article, I believe there is a significant contradiction in how the definition of accounting is currently presented, which I’d like to discuss in more detail.

The article, as it stands, introduces "accounting" in its most general sense without any mention of "analysis" in the opening definition. This omission is particularly concerning because later in the same article, when discussing management accounting, it explicitly mentions that management accounting involves analysis. This creates an inherent contradiction: how can one specialized branch of accounting (i.e., management accounting) include analysis while the broader field of accounting, which encompasses all subfields, does not?

This suggests that accounting as a whole is merely about recording transactions, which is a gross oversimplification of the profession. The field of accounting, in reality, is much broader. Accounting not only involves recording financial information but also interpreting, analyzing, and presenting it in ways that assist decision-making for businesses, individuals, and governments alike. To exclude any mention of analysis in the opening definition of the entire field is misleading and diminishes the full scope of what accounting truly entails.

What is even more contradictory is that analysis plays a critical role in all aspects of accounting, not just in management accounting. Financial accounting, for example, requires rigorous analysis to prepare accurate financial statements, interpret company performance, and ensure compliance with standards. Similarly, audit and tax accounting are also grounded in analytical processes that go far beyond simple bookkeeping. In fact, without analysis, accounting information would be of little use to stakeholders, as raw data alone does not inform strategic decisions.

Given that the article later discusses analysis in the context of management accounting, I believe it is essential to reflect this in the broader definition of accounting as well. Not only would this resolve the contradiction, but it would also provide readers with a more accurate and complete understanding of the field from the outset.

I propose a slight but meaningful revision to the opening sentence, which could say something like: "Accounting is the process of recording, analyzing, and reporting financial information." This small addition acknowledges that accounting is not limited to recording transactions but also involves the critical step of analyzing financial data to provide meaningful insights.

I genuinely believe this revision will enhance the accuracy and clarity of the article, and I kindly ask you to reconsider my suggestion. Thank you for your dedication to ensuring that Wikipedia provides high-quality and informative content, and I hope we can collaborate to resolve this issue for the benefit of all readers. Wikinegarr (talk) 12:30, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Kindly stop pasting this AI-generated WP:WALLOFTEXT everywhere, this is the third location so far. MrOllie (talk) 12:31, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I did not wanted to post it here. you and others told me that i have to move this text here so i did it. it is no ai. it is for myselfe. Wikinegarr (talk) 12:34, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe that, and neither do AI-detection tools. MrOllie (talk) 12:35, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

If it's not AI did you get somewhere else to write it for you? Since it's not how you normally write. If you got someone else to write it for you this is concerning since it's unclear if you got proper permission to contribute this person's work under the GFDL and CC BY-SA 4.0 licences. Unless you have proper permission, please redact all your posts of this and ask for them to be deleted as WP:Copyvio. Nil Einne (talk) 14:23, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nil Einne it's not ai. it's from myself. it's not how i normally write Because i normally don't have enough time so i talk with microphone and it changes my voice to text but it seems that there's something wrong with microphone and sometimes it can not convert my voice to correct text Wikinegarr (talk) 15:18, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikinegarr: Sorry but that's nonsense. A dictation system will not use the non-standard capitalisation and spacing you normally use. And it's unlikely to make the mistakes you normally make which are seem to be clearly the mistakes of someone who is a non-native speaker of English rather than voice recognition errors. Nil Einne (talk) 15:23, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nil Einne that is possible because of my old system. Wikinegarr (talk) 15:26, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikinegarr: No it's not how such systems have ever worked since it makes absolutely no sense. An understanding of the basics of programming and language will reveal this. Or you can just go back to something 20 years ago and see it's not how they work. BTW, a dictation system will not make spelling errors, like you sometimes do, unless you are spelling out the word letter by letter which no one is likely to do for simple English words not least because it's very slow. (A dictation system might interpret the wrong word, e.g. it's plausible it could interpret know as no; but it's not going to spit out konw instead of know or awnser instead of answer.) Nil Einne (talk) 15:32, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nil Einne A combination of my grammatical weaknesses, my haste to speak and not thinking about proper sentence structure, my non-English accent, and my microphone and system issues led to those mistakes, and it's entirely possible. We are not talking about a healthy microphone and system. We are talking about a broken system and microphone. Wikinegarr (talk) 15:48, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikinegarr: no it's not. It's not how such systems work. However you speak and however broken such systems are they are not going to spit out konw or awnser unless these words were add to their dictionary. They are not going to randomly fail to capitalise i and especially not fail to capitalise the first letter of a sentence in some cases while capitalising them elsewhere and then randomly capitalising the first letter of a word when it isn't needed. They are not going to add two spaces between a period and the next word in one instance "meaning. This" and then add no spaces in another "this.Bookkeeping". I suggest you desist with this nonsense. Using an LLM is a problem, but is IMO not an instant site ban offence. Making up such nonsense IMO clearly is. An editor who makes up nonsense in their comments cannot be trusted and so should never be editing Wikipedia. Nil Einne (talk) 16:34, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I do not know why @Wikinegarr: is so set on including "analysis" in the first sentence, but their explanations have not provided a compelling case for it, nor have they identified here any secondary sources that specifically include it in their definition. I was willing to WP:AGF in this editor, but I am starting to have my reservations about whether they have the project's best interests in mind, especially in light of their most recent post, which is clearly the work of a LLM. —C.Fred (talk) 18:38, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@C.Fred the reason is that if you don't add the analysis in the main sentence of lead, main definition of accounting in article would be the definition of bookkeeping, not accounting. the difference between bookkeeping and accounting is about analysis. Wikinegarr (talk) 21:01, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikinegarr As I've already shown, textbooks don't include analysis in the definition. Based on what specific source are you so adamant that analysis must be included? —C.Fred (talk) 21:04, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@C.Fred the user who deleted my edits accepted my sources about this subject so let don't discuss about source. his problem is something else. he says somewhere else of article talked about analysis.but my problem is that it's not enough because we need to put "analysis" on the main part of lead not in other parts. Wikinegarr (talk) 21:19, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikinegarr I'm not that editor. I want to know what the source is. I will repeat my request: please provide the specific source that you are relying on about putting analysis in the first sentence. If you do not provide a specific source, you leave me in the awkward position of making a judgement call of whether your non-answer means: (1) no such source exists and you are bluffing, which would be disruptive behaviour; (2) the source exists but you refuse to provide it, which would be disruptive behaviour, or (3) you do not understand what I asked, which would raise concerns about minimum competence to edit. —C.Fred (talk) 21:26, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@C.Fred If I provide reliable sources, do you promise to cooperate with me and apply the necessary edits to the article, and if your edits are removed, do the necessary follow-up to add the word analysis to the article, like me? Wikinegarr (talk) 21:30, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikinegarr I'm not agreeing to anything sight unseen. If you have sources, I expect to see them in your next reply. —C.Fred (talk) 22:01, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@C.Fred Accounting measures and analyzes Wikinegarr (talk) 11:36, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikinegarr Where specifically does that appear in the cited source? I do not see that text. Further, I will note that the text you're citing is very close to advertising material from the AICPA and CIMA about the CGMA credential, and the material is focused on managerial accounting. (Disclosure: I was a CGMA when the AICPA rolled it out in the US and awarded it to all CPAs, but I did not keep the credential active.) —C.Fred (talk) 11:43, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@C.Fred search the text of pages. then you will see the word of analysis. Wikinegarr (talk) 11:49, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wikinegarr I did, and it was not in the cited document. —C.Fred (talk) 03:24, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/undergraduate-programs/bba/academics/majors/accounting-major/

https://www.flatworldsolutions.com/financial-services/differences-between-bookkeeping-accounting.php

https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/accounting/accounting.shtml Wikinegarr (talk) 08:17, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

And here's Flatworld's definition: "Accounting is the process of summarizing, interpreting, and communicating financial transactions which were classified in the ledger account".[9] No mention of analysis. —C.Fred (talk) 12:07, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Accounting analyst Wikinegarr (talk) 08:20, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

If I am the user being discussed here, do not put words in my mouth and claim my support for your sources (or indeed for anything else). MrOllie (talk) 01:55, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@MrOllie you said all those things. it doesn't matter after that you changed your talks or not. you said your problem is just with the place of analysis word. not with itself. Wikinegarr (talk) 11:37, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

No, that never happened. Provide diffs or retract your statement. MrOllie (talk) 15:27, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

• Omit analysis and close the thread. The only editor proposing the addition of "analysis" has failed to provide sources supporting the claim that it is part of the definition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by C.Fred (talk • contribs) 08:07, October 4, 2024 (UTC)

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.