Accounting is the systematic and comprehensive recording of financial transactions pertaining to a business, and it also refers to the process of summarizing, analyzing and reporting these transactions to oversight agencies and tax collection entities. Accounting is one of the key functions for almost any business; it may be handled by a bookkeeper and accountant at small firms or by sizable finance departments with dozens of employees at large companies.

The reports generated by various streams of accounting, such as cost accounting and management accounting, are invaluable in helping management make informed business decisions. While basic accounting functions can be handled by a bookkeeper, advanced accounting is typically handled by qualified accountants who possess designations such as Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in the United States, or Chartered Accountant (CA), Certified General Accountant (CGA) or Certified Management Accountant (CMA) in Canada.

The financial statements that summarize a large company's operations, financial position and cash flows over a particular period are concise statements based on thousands of financial transactions. As a result, all accounting designations are the culmination of years of study and rigorous examinations combined with a minimum number of years of practical accounting experience.

In most cases, accountants use generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) when preparing financial statements. GAAP is a set of standards related to balance sheet identification, outstanding share measurements and other accounting issues, and its standards are based on double-entry accounting, a method which enters each expense or incoming revenue in two places on a company's balance sheet.

Financial accounting refers to the processes accountants use to generate the annual accounting statements of a firm. Management accounting uses much of the same processes but utilizes information in different ways. Namely, in management accounting, an accountant generates monthly or quarterly