Accounting systems are designed mainly to provide information that managers and outsiders can use in decision making. They also serve other purposes: to produce operating documents, to protect the company’s assets, to provide data for company tax returns, and, in some cases, to provide the basis for reimbursement of costs by clients or customers.

The accounting organization is responsible for preparing documents that contain instructions for a variety of tasks, such as payment of customer bills or preparing employee payrolls. It prepares confidential documents, such as records of employees’ salaries and wages. Many of these documents also serve other accounting purposes, but they would have to be prepared even if no information reports were necessary. Measured by the number of people involved and the amount of time required, document preparation is one of the biggest jobs performed by an organization’s accounting department.

Accounting systems must provide means of reducing the chance of losses of assets due to carelessness or dishonesty on the part of employees, suppliers, and customers. Asset protection devices are often very simple; for example, many restaurants use numbered meal checks so that waiters will not be able to submit one check to the customer and another, with a lower total, to the cashier. Other devices entail a partial duplication of effort or a division of tasks between two individuals to reduce the opportunity for unobserved thefts.

These are all part of the company’s system of internal controls. Another important element in this system is internal auditing. The task of internal auditors is to see whether prescribed data handling and asset protection procedures are being followed. To accomplish this, they usually observe some of the work as it is being performed and examine a sample of past transactions for accuracy and fidelity to the system. Internal auditors might also insert a set of fictitious data into the system to see whether the resulting output meets a predetermined standard. This technique is particularly useful in testing the validity of new computer systems.

The accounting system must also provide data for use in the completion of the company’s tax returns. This function is the concern of tax accounting. In some countries financial accounting must conform to tax accounting rules laid down by national tax laws and regulations, and tabulations prepared for tax purposes often diverge from those submitted to shareholders and others. “Taxable income,” it should be remembered, is a legal concept rather than an accounting concept, and tax laws typically contain incentives that encourage companies to do certain things while discouraging them from doing others. Accordingly, what is “income” or “capital” to a tax agency may be far different from the accountant’s measures of these same concepts. Finally, accounting systems in some companies must provide cost data in the forms required for submission to customers who have agreed to reimburse the company for costs incurred on the customers’ behalf.

The history and development of accounting can be found in R. Gene Brown and Kenneth S. Johnston, Paciolo on Accounting, trans. from Latin (1963, reprinted 1984), an annotated translation of the treatise, published in 1494, that is widely accepted as the foundation of modern accounting and bookkeeping systems; A.C. Littleton, Accounting Evolution to 1900, 2nd ed. (1966, reprinted 1988), a scholarly analysis of the development of accounting from the Renaissance to modern times; John B. Canning, Economics of Accountancy (1929, reprinted 1978), an early landmark in the development of 20th-century accounting thought and one of the first systematic attempts to build a structure of accounting on the basis of economic theory; Eugen Schmalenbach, Dynamic Accounting, trans. by G.W. Murphy and Kenneth S. Most (1959, reprinted 1980), a translation of the 12th ed. of the most influential accounting book published in Germany in the first half of the 20th century, which had a measurable impact on the accounting systems used in most continental European countries; and Edgar O. Edwards and Philip W. Bell, The Theory and Measurement of Business Income (1961, reissued 1995), a critical review of conventional accounting measurements, with a detailed examination of possible alternative measurement systems.

Current reference texts are Robert N. Anthony and Leslie K. Pearlman, Essentials of Accounting, 7th ed. (2000), an easy-to-follow, self-teaching guide to accounting fundamentals, using the programmed-learning approach; George Foster and Srikant Datar, Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis, 10th ed. (2000), a popular textbook covering managerial accounting in depth; and Robert N. Anthony and David W. Young, Management Control in Nonprofit Organizations, 6th ed. (1999).

The following books provide insight into important current issues facing accountants and the accounting profession. Steven A. Zeff and Bala G. Dharan (eds.), Readings and Notes on Financial Accounting: Issues and Controversies, 5th ed. (1997), examines current views on the measurement of various financial variables for use in external financial reporting. Barry J. Brinker (ed.), Handbook of Cost Management (1993); and John K. Shank and Vijay Govindarajan, Strategic Cost Management: The New Tool for Competitive Advantage (1993), examine current issues and practices in the rapidly changing field of cost accounting for management. C.J. McNair, The Profit Potential (1994), focuses on the measurement of non-value-adding activities and the elimination of waste. Among the works focusing on ethical issues are Philip G. Cottell, Jr., and Terry M. Perlin, Accounting Ethics: A Practical Guide for Professionals (1990); George Foster, Financial Statement Analysis, 2nd ed. (1986); Marc J. Epstein and Moses L. Pava, The Shareholders’ Use of Corporate Annual Reports (1993); and Lawrence D. Brown, Modern Theory of Financial Reporting (1987).

Reference texts in financial accounting include Donald E. Kieso, Jerry J. Weygandt, and Terry D. Warfield, Intermediate Accounting, 10th ed. (2001); and William H. Beaver, Financial Reporting: An Accounting Revolution, 3rd ed. (1998). For cost accounting see Charles T. Hongren, George Foster, and Srikant Datar, Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis, 10th ed. (2000), a popular textbook covering managerial accounting in depth; for international accounting see Ahmed Belkaoui, International Accounting: Issues and Solutions (1985). An overview of positive accounting issues is Ross L. Watts and Jerold L. Zimmerman, Positive Accounting Theory (1997). Anthony G. Hopwood and Peter Miller (eds.), Accounting as Social and Institutional Practice (1994) provide a discussion of social accounting issues.