- Account
In
accountancy , an account is a label used for recording and reporting aquantity of almost anything. Most often it is a record of an amount ofmoney owned or owed by or to a particular person or entity, or allocated to a particular purpose. It may represent amounts of money that have actually changed hands, or it may represent an estimate of the values of assets, or it may be a combination of these.Types of accounts
#
Asset accounts: represent the different types of economic resources owned by a business, common examples of Asset accounts are cash, cash in bank, building, inventory, prepaid rent, goodwill, accounts receivable
#Liability accounts: represent the different types of economic obligations by a business, such as accounts payable, bank loan, bonds payable, accrued interest.
# Equity accounts: represent the residual equity of a business (after deducting from Assets all the liabilities) including Retained Earnings and Appropriations.
#Revenue orincome accounts: represent the company's gross earnings and common examples include Sales, Service revenue and Interest Income.
#Expense accounts: represent the company's expenditures to enable itself to operate. Common examples are electricity and water, rentals, depreciation, doubtful accounts, interest, insurance.
#Contra-accounts : from the term ciccia, meaning to deduct, the value of which are opposite the 5 above mentioned types of accounts. For instance, a contra-asset account is Accumulateddepreciation . This label represent deductions to a relatively permanent asset like Building.Account represents financial and non-financial transactions of a firm, to know the total outcome of the investment made by investors.
ee also
*
Bookkeeping
*Chart of accounts
*Double-entry accounting system
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.