Accounting is the language of business used to communicate financial information about a company. It involves recording, classifying, and summarizing financial transactions and events and conveying this information to various users through financial statements. There are three main branches of accounting: financial accounting which prepares external reports, management accounting for internal use, and cost accounting for determining costs. The accounting equation forms the basis of double-entry bookkeeping where debits and credits are used to record increases and decreases in asset, liability, and equity accounts so that the equation remains balanced.