This document provides an overview of accounting basics and financial accounting. It defines financial accounting as gathering and compiling data to present useful financial information to external users through general purpose financial statements. It then describes the main external users of financial statements as shareholders/investors, lenders/creditors, customers, suppliers, regulators, unions, brokers/analysts, and the press. For each user group, it provides examples of how they use financial statements in decision making.

1. ORI PRACTICAL
ACCOUNTING TRAINING
ELVIS AARON AMENYITOR

2. Accounting Basics
 Financial Accounting Basics
 Financial Accounting
 Accounting Equation
 Expanded Accounting Equation
 Account Format
 Chart of Accounts
 Asset Accounts
 Liability Accounts
 Equity Accounts
 Contra Account
 Revenue Accounts
 Expense Account
 General Ledger
 Debits and Credits
 Double Entry Accounting
 Business Events
 General Journal
 Trial Balance

3. Financial Accounting Basics
 The field of accounting is often thought of as a set of
complex business rules and endless numbers.
 Accounting, at its heart, is actually a set of very
simple concepts and principles

4. What is Financial Accounting?
 Accounting in general deals with identifying business
activities, like sales to customers, recording these activities,
like journalizing, and communicating these activities with
people outside the organization with financial statement
 Financial accounting, however, is a subsection of the general
field of accounting that focuses on gathering and compiling
data in order to present it to external users in a usable form
 Basically, financial accounting’s main purpose is to provide
useful, financial information to people or groups outside of
companies often called external users.

5. Who Uses Financial Accounting?
 The ultimate goal of financial accounting is to compile
business transactions and other input documents like invoices
and sales receipts in the form of general purpose financial
statements that can be understood by external users.

6. Different Types of Financial Statement Users
 Financial accounting aims as providing financial information that is reliable,
relevant, and comparable to these external users.
 Shareholders or Investors
 Lenders or Creditors
 Customers
 Suppliers
 Regulators
 Unions
 Brokers and Analysts
 Press

7. Shareholders or Investors
 Shareholders and other investors are usually the first group of external users
that comes to mind.
 Investors in general want to assess the value of a company in order to decide
whether it is worth buying, selling, or holding their stock.
 Investors read financial statements to help predict future performance and
company worth.

8. Lenders or Creditors
 Lenders or creditors also use financial statements to base the decisions on
because they want to know if a company is creditworthy enough to pay off
its current loans or borrow additional funds.
 Creditors study financial statements in order to analyze the liquidity and
sustainability of a company.

9. Customers
 It might sound unlikely, but many customers study financial
statements before making major purchases.
 For instance, large companies like GM will study financial
statements of their potential suppliers in order to make sure
they are fiscally sound.
 A company, like GM, benefits from long-term relationships
with its suppliers. It wants to make sure of potential suppliers’
longevity before it goes into business with them.

10. Suppliers
 Suppliers also use the financial statements of customers to
judge whether they are creditworthy enough to extend credit.
 For example, if a customer orders 100,000 units from a
supplier, the supplier wants to know whether the customer
will be able to pay for these units before the supplies incurs
the expense of producing them.

11. Regulators
 Regulators like the SEC, PCAOB, and IRS use company
financial statements to make sure the companies are
following applicable laws.
 The SEC and PCAOB monitor publicly traded companies to
reduce fraudulent business activities; whereas, the IRS is
mainly focused on tax collection and compliance

12. Unions
 Labour unions use financial information to judge whether
employee wage rates and benefit packages are fair,
 They also use this information to assess future job prospects
and bargain for higher wages and better benefits

13. Brokers and Analysts
 Brokers and analysts are often potential investors that use
financial information about companies to chart performance
trends and growth rates.
 These external users create reports that influence current
investors opinions and actions.

14. Press
 Although the press doesn’t use financial information for its
decision bases, it does report on the financial information of
companies.
 Networks like Yahoo Finance and MSN Money are multi-
million dollar businesses that simply report financial
information about other companies.