Accounting is the process of recording financial transactions pertaining to a business. The accounting process includes summarizing, analyzing and reporting these transactions to oversight agencies, regulators and tax collection entities. The financial statements used in accounting are a concise summary of financial transactions over an accounting period, summarizing a company’s operations, financial position and cash flows.
You can think of accounting as a big machine that you put raw financial information into records of all your business transactions, taxes, projections, etc. that then spits out an easy to understand story about the financial state of your business. Accounting tells you whether or not you’re making a profit, what your cash flow is, what the current value of your company’s assets and liabilities is, and which parts of your business are actually making money. Here are some quotes we have gathered for you.
Don’t ever let your business get ahead of the financial side of your business. Accounting, accounting, accounting. Know your numbers-Tilman J. Fertitta
Creativity is great-but not in accounting.– Charles Scott
Accounting is the language of business-Warren Buffett
The reaction of weak management to weak operations is often weak accounting-Warren Buffett
You have to know accounting. It’s the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I’ve heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention-Charlie Munger
Managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers are the beginning, not the end, of business valuation-Warren Buffett
Creativity is great-but not in accounting-Charles Scott
Destiny gave me only two things: a few accounting books and the gift of dreaming-Fernando Pessoa
You have to understand accounting and you have to understand the nuances of accounting. It’s the language of business and it’s an imperfect language, but unless you are willing to put in the effort to learn accounting – how to read and interpret financial statements – you really shouldn’t select stocks yourself-Warren Buffett
Accounting does not make corporate earnings or balance sheets more volatile. Accounting just increases the transparency of volatility in earnings-Diane Garnick
It sounds extraordinary, but it’s a fact that balance sheets can make fascinating reading-Mary Archer
Proper accounting is like engineering. You need a margin of safety. Thank God we don’t design bridges and airplanes the way we do accounting-
Charlie Munger
If you want an accounting of your worth, count your friends-Mary Browne
Capital isn’t this pile of money sitting somewhere; it’s an accounting construct- Bethany McLean
Accounting does not make corporate earnings or balance sheets more volatile. Accounting just increases the transparency of volatility in earnings- Diane Garnick
Accounting rules give financial institutions flexibility about when they choose to recognize venture capital profits- Alex Berenson
There is nothing wrong with good accounting, except that it does not necessarily lead to good science- Gerhard Herzberg
Accounting was the course that helped me more than anything-Julian Robertson
Destiny gave me only two things: a few accounting books and the gift of dreaming. – Fernando Pessoa
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. – Napoleon Hill
Life is like accounting, everything must be balanced.– Unknown  Â
Only accountants can save the world – through peace, goodwill and reconciliations. – Unknown
It sounds extraordinary, but it’s a fact that balance sheets can make fascinating reading. – Mary Archer
Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles; they toughen and make strong. – Norman Vincent Peale
Managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers are the beginning, not the end, of business valuation. – Warren Buffett
Never take your eyes off the cash flow because it’s the lifeblood of business. – Richard Branson
Proper accounting is like engineering. You need a margin of safety. Thank God we don’t design bridges and airplanes the way we do accounting-Charlie Munger
To be successful, you should concentrate on the world of companies, not arcane accounting mathematics-Warren Buffett
Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets-Thomas Sowell
People don’t pay attention. And then one day there’s an accounting. And after that, nothing is the same-Cormac McCarthy
Managers thinking about accounting issues should never forget one of Abraham Lincoln’s favorite riddles: How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg? The answer: Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg-Warren Buffett
People always ask me, ‘Were you funny as a child?’ Well, no, I was an accountant.-Ellen DeGeneres
In the corporate world, sometimes things aren`t exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures-George W. Bush
Without market prices for capital goods, accounting is not possible. You don’t know if you are making money or losing money, saving resources or wasting them, doing the right thing or not doing the right thing-Llewellyn Rockwell
The older I get, the more interesting I find lawyers and accountants-Alex James
There’s real “right brain” creativity that goes into all of the organizational processes that a company utilizes and must continually reinvent in order to conduct its business. But there are also the “left brain” accounting functions that must continually ask how the company is doing financially and whether the creative processes are working for the bottom line-
John Kao
Accounting for the most part, remains a legalistic and traditional practice, almost immune to self-criticism by scientific methods-
Kenneth E. Boulding
Mathematics is less related to accounting than it is to philosophy-
Leonard Adleman
Aggressive accounting does not mean illegal accounting-Kenneth Lay
Cost Accounting is enemy number one of productivity-Eliyahu M. Goldratt
There’s no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting- David Letterman
In the long run managements stressing accounting appearance over economic substance usually achieve little of either-Warren Buffett
There are three cardinal rules – don’t take somebody else’s boyfriend unless you’ve been specifically invited to do so, don’t take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters-W. H. Auden
Accounting is a big subject and there are huge forces in play. The entire momentum of existing thinking and existing custom is in a direction that allows terrible follies to happen, and the terrible follies have terrible consequences-Charlie Munger
The company accountant is shy and retiring. He’s shy a quarter of a million dollars. That’s why he’s retiring-Milton Berle
At Gallaudet, deafness isn’t an issue. You don’t even think about it. Students can pay attention to accounting or psychology or journalism. But when a deaf person goes to another college, no matter how supportive it is, that person doesn’t get the same access- I. King Jordan
I don’t really care about money. I find money boring and accounting boring, so I’m probably not going to ever make a lot of money-Juliana Hatfield
I know what I don’t know. To this day, I don’t know technology, and I don’t know finance or accounting-Bernard Ebbers
We have the most crude accounting tools. It’s tragic because our accounts and our national arithmetic doesn’t tell us the things that we need to know-Susan George
Accounting for the unpaid care economy can drive progressive policies such as paid family leave, social security credits for early childcare, tax credits, and quality early childhood education-Sri Mulyani Indrawati
Identity theft involving these cards is a growing form of white collar crime, facilitating illegal immigration, banking and accounting fraud, tax evasion, and other nefarious activities-Ron Lewis
Money is not worth dying for. I know, because years ago, while nearly a million dollars in debt, suicide was an option. Rather than run, rich dad suggested I write down all the mistakes I made and then seek help. If I made accounting mistakes, I talked to an accountant. If there was a legal mistake, I talked to an attorney. That was my way out. That is how I got smarter-Robert Kiyosaki
I don’t really care about money. I find money boring and accounting boring, so I’m probably not going to ever make a lot of money-Juliana Hatfield
There is no business like show business. There is also no business like certified public accounting, but that doesn’t rhyme as well-Craig Shaw Gardner
Accounting can be divided into several fields including financial accounting, management accounting, external auditing, tax accounting and cost accounting. Accounting information systems are designed to support accounting functions and related activities. Financial accounting focuses on the reporting of an organization’s financial information, including the preparation of financial statements, to the external users of the information, such as investors, regulators and suppliers; and management accounting focuses on the measurement, analysis and reporting of information for internal use by management. 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.