Foundation Flashcards
(104 cards)
What is Financial Accounting?
The financial system that tracks and records an organisation’s business transactions and aggregates them into reports.
What is GAAP?
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
What are the 5 basic financial accounting principles?
Entity, money measurement, going concern, consistency and materiality.
What are the two important qualities of Financial Accounting?
Relevance and Reliability
What are the 3 main financial reports or statements?
Balance sheet, Income Statement and Statement of Cash Flows
What is a balance sheet also known as?
“Statement of Financial Position”
What does a balance sheet record?
Assets, Liability and Owner’s Equity
What does an Income Statement list?
Revenues Earned and Expenses incurred
What is an Income Statement?
It details an entity’s operating performance over a specific period of time.
What is a Statement of Cash Flows?
It details the sources and uses of cash of an entity over a period of time (or accounting period).
Which of the following is prepared at a point in time, and not over a period of time:
- Balance Sheet
- Income Statement
- Statement of Cash Flows
Balance Sheet
The Entity Concept states what?
Accounts are kept for an entity as distinct from the people who own, run or do business with the entity.
Ie - it is separate from the owner’s personal expenses.
The Money Measurement Concept states what?
Financial accounting deals only with the things that can be represented in monetary terms.
For example - whilst employee adds value to firms, the value is difficult to quantify and as a result are not placed on the balance sheet.
The Going Concern concept means what?
An entity is expected to remain in operation for the indefinite future, in the absence of evidences for the contrary.
It makes the account avoid the “doomsday” scenario, where all the entity’s resources are valued at their current worth.
The Consistency Concept states what?
An entity should use the same account methods and procedures from period to period.
(Unless it has a sound reason to change methods)
What is the Materiality concept?
Requires entity’s to apply proper accounting methods to items that are material.
What is the Materiality limit?
A limit isn’t specifically set - in general however - an item is material if its disclosure would impact the decisions of the users of the accounts.
The quality of the accounting outputs depend on what?
Relevance and Reliability
Relevance refers to what?
The timeliness and usefulness
Reliability refers to what?
The objectivity and verifiability
Does judgement need to be used to make the trade-off between relevance and reliability?
Yes - there isn’t a way to record a transaction that will maximise both these properties.
True of False: Accountants typically favour reliability over relevance?
True - despite experts pricing an asset accounts will often revert to the price an entity paid
Accrual accounting focuses on what?
the economic characteristics of transactions rather than their cash flows.
It attempts to record the financial effects on a business of transactions that have economic consequences for the business in the accounting period when the transactions occurs, rather than only in the period where cash is received or paid.
What are the two important concepts for the preparation of a balance sheet?
Dual Aspect and Historical Cost