Handbook of Financial Accounting

Financial accountancy is the field of accountancy concerned with the preparation of financial statements for decision makers, such as stockholders, suppliers, banks, employees, government agencies, owners, and other stakeholders. Financial capital maintenance can be measured in either nominal monetary units or units of constant purchasing power. The fundamental need for financial accounting is to reduceprincipal–agent problem by measuring and monitoring agents’ performance and reporting the results to interested users. Financial accountancy is used to prepare accounting information for people outside the organization or not involved in the day-to-day running of the company. Management accounting provides accounting information to help managers make decisions to manage the business. In short, financial accounting is the process of summarizing financial data taken from an organization’s accounting records and publishing in the form of annual (or more frequent) reports for the benefit of people outside the organization. Financial accountancy is governed by both local and international accounting standards. An accounting analyst evaluates public company financial statements. Public companies issue these (10-K) annual financial statements as required by the Security and Exchange Commission. The statements include the balance sheet, the income statement, the statement of cash flows and the notes to the financial statements. Specifically, the notes to the financial statements contain considerable quantitative detail supporting the financial statements along with narrative information. The present book has been planned in such a way to given an overall view of this subject.