Talk:Accounting/Archive 2

Invitation to participate in the Accountancy Task Force
If you are interested in working in collaboration with Wikipedia members on improving the article Accountancy, you will be pleased to hear that the Accountancy task force has been set up and is seeking participants who can assist with the article's overhaul. Perhaps you would like to provide verifiable content on this subject matter, in which case your input could be invaluable. Alternatively we are also seeking participants who can help with the systematic sorting of related accountancy articles into meaningful categories, an activity that does not require undertaking research but will nonetheless help improve the quality of the article's links. Either way, the task force would like to hear from you! --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:31, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Practioners of Accountancy
I have elimated the paragraph on "Practioners of Accountancy", which seems to be comprised of original research. To replace it, I have inserted a paragraph on the origin of the term Accountant (citing Francis William Pixely, admittedly an old source), which I feel provides more encyclopedic coverage of the subject of this article compared with a random selection from the List of accountancy bodies. --Gavin Collins (talk) 15:44, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Standalone links
I have removed all the random and arbitrary standalone links, both internal and external, that have until now blighted this article. In themeselves, they add nothing of encylopedic value to the article, since they are devoid of the commentary, context, criticism or analysis on their own.

Standalone external links to commercial websites that are not used as the basis for citation should be removed as soon as they are added, as they are likely to in contravention of WP:SPAM.

Standalone internal links should also be removed, as there is an extensive web of links to other topics are already contained in the body of the article itself. Standalone links are not necessary, as this article forms part of an extensive web of categories (see WP:CATEGORY for more information). Stand alone links are not appropriate in accordance with Wikipedia's policy on internal links (see WP:LINKFARM) Such links may be more appropriate in sub-topics of Accountancy. For a list of sub-topics, follow the link to Category:Accountancy at the bottom of this page, or use the search tool by inserting Category:Accountancy. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:34, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

OK...but now the article is not an article about accountancy anymore...it's just the history of accountancy with a section on Enron. Surely, at the very least, this article should be a signpost to other related articles? AnthonyUK (talk) 09:59, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * My view is that signposting to other articles does not really add any encyclopedic content per se. If an accounting term is not mentioned in the body of the article, then that may indicate that there is a content gap, and that new content is needed. I agree with you that this article needs new content, but it needs to be sourced; simply adding links is not a substitute for this in my view. However, I think we do not want to go back to having a list of links to other articles just for the sake of it, as we don't want to turn this page into "List of accounting topics" (which is probably redundant given that all the articles listed in it are all categorised) nor a WP:LINKFARM. The other problem related to having lists of links is that it encourages futher but unrelated links to be added, which blights the article by placing undue weight on other topics. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:34, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Accountancy
.,is accountancy a good course!?., is it hard!?., or not?., what are the things involve in accounting!?., —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.54.67.90 (talk) 04:13, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If you like math as a subject, you will like accountancy. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:35, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

GAAP
I updated the discussion on GAAP to be more world viewed. Previously it made it sound as though GAAP was in the US.Jaromhuff21 (talk) 18:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

confusing defintion
In the Document's head section

Accounting has also been defined by the AICPA as "The art of recording, classifying, and summarizing in a significant manner and in terms of money, transactions and events which are, in part at least, of financial character, and interpreting the results thereof."[2]

Is the quote badly written or incorrectly quoted?

Slawkenbergius (talk) 23:54, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It makes sense to me, but it maybe possible that you are right and its meaning is not clear because this definiton is used slightly out of context. Which part do you not understand? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:32, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Accounting in Ancient India
I have removed the following unsourced content:

Kautilya has detailed on importance of accounting in creation of ethical society in his book  arthashastra He viewed philosophy and political science as separate disciplines but considered accounting an integral part of economics. He specified a very broad scope for accounting and considered explanation and prediction as its proper objectives. Kautilya developed bookkeeping rules to record and classify economic data, emphasized the critical role of independent periodic audits and proposed the establishment of two important but separate offices--the Treasurer and Comptroller-Auditor, to increase accountability, specialization, and above all to reduce the scope for conflicts of interest. He also linked the successful enforcement of rules and regulations to their clarity, consistency and completeness. Kautilya believed that such measures were necessary but not sufficient to eliminate fraudulent accounting. He also emphasized the role of ethics, considering ethical values as the glue which binds society and promotes economic development.

If anyone can source these statements, perhaps we can include it within this article. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:43, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Accounting scandals: Lehman Brothers
I have removed the following content on the grounds that it is not sourced:


 * Another notable scandal involves former global financial services firm Lehman Brothers and its secret usage of controversal Repo 105. Jenner & Block, a court-appointed examiner reported that Lehman never publicly disclosed its use of Repo 105 transactions, its accounting treatment for these transactions, the considerable escalation of its total Repo 105 usage in late 2007 and into 2008, or the material impact these transactions had on the firm’s publicly reported net leverage ratio. According to former Global Financial Controller Martin Kelly, a careful review of Lehman’s Forms 10‐K and 10‐Q would not reveal Lehman’s use of Repo 105 transactions. Lehman failed to disclose its Repo 105 practice even though Kelly believed “that the only purpose or motive for the transactions was reduction in balance sheet”; felt that “there was no substance to the transactions”; and expressed concerns with Lehman’s Repo 105 program to two consecutive Lehman Chief Financial Officers – Erin Callan and Ian Lowitt – advising them that the lack of economic substance to Repo 105 transactions meant “reputational risk” to Lehman if the firm’s use of the transactions became known to the public. In addition to its material omissions, Lehman affirmatively misrepresented in its financial statements that the firm treated all repo transactions as financing transactions – i.e., not sales – for financial reporting purposes.

Although this reads like reasonable summary, the allegations against officers of Lehman Brothers require need to be backed up, as do the "quotations". --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 03:45, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Copyright problem
This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 12:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry guys,you'll find a lot of the history section has disappeared. The sources are sound - if anyone wants to rewrite based on sources then the sources are still in the article history. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:01, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Accountancy in a knowledge based economy
I removed the following text:

''The development of a knowledge-based economy requires new formulations of accounting, i.e. knowledge accountancy. The accountancy of knowledge is the process of formulating, classifying and communicating data relating to individuals and organizations associated with the knowledge economy. This accountancy of knowledge requires its own conceptual apparatus and array of bookkeeping terms, e.g. personal knowledge balance sheets and knowledge-based balance sheets. Personal knowledge balance sheets track the value of knowledge worker competencies while knowledge-based balance sheets show, in monetary terms, the knowledge resources under the control of a business entity.''

Whilst I think that this article could usefully include a section criticising the shortcomings of traditional accounting - I remember there was a paragraph on social accounting that did exactly that. I don't believe that extending accountancy to include "knowledge based balance sheets" is useful, and the idea of valuing knowledge in monetary terms is nonsensical and, indeed, specifically prohibited by accounting standards in all jurisdictions that I am aware of. AnthonyUK (talk) 19:32, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Caption blunder
Big errors in caption, due to shallowness of multi-copying between sources... The painting has 0.001% chance to be by its traditional attribution, Jacopo de' Barbari, and the open book is by Euclid. --&#39;&#39;&#39;Attilios&#39;&#39;&#39; (talk) 21:47, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 20:14, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Mathematical Science
I removed the reference to accountancy as a branch of mathematical science because accountancy is primarily concerned with recording already determined numbers in journal entries rather than with arithmetical calculations so I would not consider accoutancy to be part of math. I have read in the history of wikipedia's mathematics article although not in the current version a section titled "what mathematics is not" and it said accountancy is not math using a similiar argument stating accountants are more concerned with journal entries than arithmetical manipulation. --67.52.196.217 (talk) 10:37, 8 May 2011 (UTC)


 * meh, I wouldn't necessarily agree with your reasons but I agree with your conclusion. AnthonyUK (talk) 13:38, 8 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I do not agree. Accounting involves journal entries I agree but it also involves basic mathematics and arithmatic. Accountancy if you are unsure - was defined originally as being a method of counting. Then comes accruals and prepayments whereby a paper based document will state the owing from one human to another. Accounting is merely adding up what is owed to where, and will eventually demonstrate the method of payment. The fact that the final stages of preparing accounts involves journal entries in order to juggle the figures to portray a fair trade system, does not mean accounting is just that. Accounting is an art, such is poetry. Poetry is not just English Language for example but it is the finesse of the words that create power. Merely journaling the poem by rearranging the lines would not state that the poem has been written therefore why is accounting not a branch of scientific mathematics. We are science and maths is maths.

(SAMWAM88 (talk) 16:31, 5 August 2012 (UTC))

Well, I disagree that math is actually a science as it's a priori rather than a posteriori - fundamental espistomological distinction in the western canon. However, accounting is certainly not mathematics. Even if it heavily involves mathematics (which it doesn't really), it is not the reasoning and deduction by formal proofs fundamental numerical facts from a set of axioms. That's maybe a poor definition of math - I am not a math scientist, after all. But accounting is a professional study. It does not reveal fundamental truths or theories about the world. It may incorporate information from fields that study those things, but it is not the study of those things. Gn341ram (talk) 04:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Mathematics is nothing but a set of ethics. Helal Arif (talk) 19:33, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

What is revolution Umar ansari (talk) 01:23, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Definition of Accounting
ACCOUNTING(ACCOUNTANCY)is the SCIENCE OF 1. COUNTING, 2. MEASURING, AND 3. PRICING GOODS AND/OR SERVICES AT EVERY HUMAN ACTIVITY. FURTHERMORE, ACCOUNTING(ACCOUNTANCY)IS A QUANTITATIVE SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLE. IMPORTANTANT OBSERVATIONS: 1. DEFINITELY, ACCOUNTING IS NOT AN ART. The art refers to sense of joy. Perhaps the writer/speaker wanted to mean strategy. 2. The work of recording human transactions everywhere and at every time, is BOOKKEEPING. 3. A science involves principles(the first/pristine truths) Zetetics 4. An art involves human invention(Heuristics) and creativity(Sinectics) 5. A principle is the first truth underlying knowledge 6. An invention may involve application of certain principles 7. A principle is an everlasting and universal(ecumenic) truth 8. A human invention is a short-term and local-scope truth 9. Accounting relates to Finance 10. Bookkeeping relates to the job of recording and classifying moneyworth(crematistic-meaning) goods and /or services

For future discussion, a forum and/or symposia might be organized

CPC José Ramírez Carbonel

Buenos Aires, Maarch 18, 2012 10:42am Sunday — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.190.119.145 (talk) 13:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

The World English Dictionary defines art as "(2) the exercise of human skill, (10) method, facility, or knack, and (11) the system of rules or principles governing a particular human activity." Under these definitions, accountancy qualifies as an art. Science is defined as "(1) the systematic study of the nature and behavior of the material and physical universe, based on observation, experiment, and measurement, and the formulation of laws to describe these facts in general terms" and "(4)any body of knowledge organized in a systematic manner." Accountancy is not based on immutable physical laws but on tradition, laws, regulatory requirements and culture and thus only qualifies as a science because the knowledge is systematically organized. RM MARTIN (talk) 15:17, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

There are figurative senses of the terms art and science. But I think in this context science refers to the academic discipline and family-resemblance of methods meant to obtain objective, factual information about the world. Art is (generally speaking; humanities majors love debating this one) the creation of something for aesthetic value (or perhaps social value or something similar - again, goddamned humanities majors and their wishy-washing fuzziness of thought). The words of other meanings in different contexts of course. When someone says "X is an art and a science" they mean that it requires both precision and judgment. There seems to be a modern trend of calling any new discipline [blank]-science to mean "study of" instead of adding the suffix of -ology so you wind up with political science which is essentially a humanity and computer science which involves tons of science, but is more about technology (which is of course the practical, real-world application of science, but in and of itself science). As a discipline and a subject of study, accounting is neither art nor science. It's more like funerary studies (actually called funeral science at my college, funnily enough) or construction management or auto body. Despite the fact that there is quite a bit of room to debate what is and isn't science, accounting doesn't even meet a more progressive, inclusive definition in my opinion. People like to compete for the title of "science" because they think it adds an heir of legitimacy to their subject, but I think that's misguided. Gn341ram (talk) 19:03, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

History section
I've shifted the History section to its own page with significant restructuring, addition of information, and removal of unsourced information, because the section was previously excessively long. Most of the information was unchanged, though, because the section's quality was already pretty high before the move. - Well-rested Talk  10:45, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Why is Accounting in the internet user account management there?
The RFC 2975 - Internet Engineering Task Force, definitions of accounting is obviously for internal user account use in internet systems like SMTP and POP-servers. see: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2975.txt

I really think it is such a special topic it has nothing to do with the genral subject of accounting to do? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.247.9.228 (talk) 18:47, 13 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, this has nothing to do with accountancy in the context of this article. It should be a hatnote redirect, but I don't know what article to point it to. Suggestions? Ivanvector (talk) 15:08, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Internet Engineering Task Force?  Well-rested Talk  15:25, 28 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I deleted the section since it is off-topic. Since there is no article about this either, a hat note isn't needed. Maybe we could add a line in the dab page. Bhny (talk) 15:54, 28 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Funny, I was just going to suggest deleting the dab page. It only has two links, one to this article, and one to Accountant which is linked from this article anyway. Ivanvector (talk) 17:56, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Old edits by user Gavin.collins
I came across an old discussion on WP:AN regarding the behaviour of a contributor to this article,, which resulted in a permanent site-wide ban. One of the issues discussed was non-constructive removal of content from articles and replacing with copyvio material, which was subsequently itself removed. Accountancy was one of the articles mentioned. It might benefit us to review the user's edits and determine if any useful information was removed. Sorry if this comes across as assuming bad faith. Ivanvector (talk) 18:07, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Improving Accountancy
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who thinks this article could use some serious improvement. I've been doing some significant restructuring of the article, including reworking the lede to a more normal size and shifting the previously-massive History section to its own page (with a lot of additional information).

However, there's still a lot more work to be done, perhaps the most imoportant of which is the addition of information about accounting: it's strange that the accountancy article doesn't have sections describing financial accounting and management accounting, for example.

In the meantime, listing some issues about this article so as to stimulate discussion:
 * Should the article's title be "Accountancy" or "Accounting"?
 * How should topics like financial accounting, management accounting, and auditing be incorporated? E.g. do we create a section like "Fields of accounting" (like in Mathematics) or give each topic its own section (like in Economics)?
 * Are any other topics (e.g. Accounting education, Accounting firms) important enough to have a section here? Should any section in the article not be here?

-  Well-rested Talk  10:43, 28 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for getting this started, ! It looks like the issues you posted are likely to set off some lively debate, so if you don't mind I went ahead and added a new section below regarding the article title. Ivanvector (talk) 17:56, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Adding a quick note that I'm going to proceed with adding the various topics of accounting under "Fields of accounting", since I've found other sources using that, and since it's already the terminology used in the main accounting template. - Well-rested Talk  00:33, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Changes done (for now). Added sections on financial accounting, management accounting and auditing, with links to the respective main pages. I'll make further improvements in the coming days. -  Well-rested Talk  02:15, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Old discussion
Why is the less common term 'accountancy' used rather than the more common 'accounting'? Google is usually a suitable metric of common usage and accounting is used twice as often worldwide, than the term accountancy. A simple search shows 11,800,000 hits for accountancy and 23,400,000 for accounting. A British variant that is less common should be noted, but not presumed to be the right way over the more common form.JascalX (talk) 17:15, 18 April 2009 (UTC) As regards the view that accountancy is a British variant of word accounting, I do not have any sources to support or disprove this view, but I can tell you that one of the the first magazines published by a professional accounting organsiation is the Journal of Accountancy which was first published in the US in 1905. This suggests to me that the term accountancy may well of orginated in the US, rather than the UK. If you can cite sources to support or disprove any of these points, your research efforts would be most welcome. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:46, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The difference between accounting and accountancy is probably to do with the evolution of the subject. In the same way bookkeeping evolved from record keeping, and accounting evolved from bookkeeping, accountancy as we know it today has evolved from accounting. I can't cite any sources to back this up at the moment, so this is just my view.
 * Thank you for the response Gavin. I looked around the various dictionaries online and found that 3 of the 5 listed it as a British variant, two did not specify and one of the two non-specific listed the origin year as 1859. Etymology aside, I do not believe the term is very common outside the UK or former UK Commonwealth and appears to not be the more common term worldwide. This is based on simple search engine hits using each term alone or in combination with related termsJascalX (talk) 03:00, 19 April 2009 (UTC).
 * Strange, I came to a different conclusion. As you know, the Journal of Accountancy is published by American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and although I am not familiar with how they rank relative in terms of profession associations, their membership seems reasonably large and their history goes back quite a while. I would conclude from this evidence that the term accountancy is used often in the US, even if only amoung memembers of the profession. However, from what little I have read in accademic papers and books, the term accountancy is used in the US quite often, and even some accademic departments use the term in their name & courses too. You might be right about accountancy being a British origin, but then again you might be wrong, for it is the Merriman-Webster online dictionary that suggests the origin of the word dates back to 1859. It is interesting that an American dictionary should know this. Perhaps the word accountancy is American after all? Only further research will reveal this. Overall, I disagree with your conclusion that it is a term used only in the UK. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:14, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Leaving aside the question of history, it seems clear that "accountancy" is a narrower and less commonly used term than "accounting". "Accountancy" refers much more specifically to the profession, and not to the whole field, which involves economics and statistics as well as accountancy in the professional sense. A change of name would be desirable.JQ (talk) 08:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The evidence I have cited suggests otherwise. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Could you spell this evidence out? You've shown that the term "accountancy" may not be UK-specific, but your own comments such as "used quite often, and even [by] some academic departments" support the view that "accounting" is more standard. Most of the subcategories of Category:Accountancy use "accounting" in their names, and many would make little sense otherwise.JQ (talk) 20:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have no evidence to demonstrate which term is "standard". But if you can come up with a source that says accounting is the standard term, then please let us know. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:31, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Just a few interesting tidbits. The Wikipedia article traffic statistics for April 2009 stated that Accounting was visited 54,746 times during the month (link) while Accountancy had 22,230 visits (link). This would lead me to believe that the majority of readers are typing in accounting, and being redirected to the accountancy page. In addition, a portion of the 22,230 visits could be attributed to links from templates, other articles, etc. (of course the same could be said that some articles are still linking to accounting instead of accountancy). I'm not arguing for either term, but just thought I'd point this out if it assists in the decision of moving back or not. (As a side note, my degree says Accounting on it). --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 09:24, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * More similar evidence. "accounting discipline" gets about 20 000 ghits, "accountancy discipline" <1000. A Google search for dictionary+accountancy produces, as its top hits nearly all refs to "dictionary of accounting" and similar. The first I can find ofr "accountancy" refers to "the art or practice of an accountant" which sounds about right to me. That is, "accountancy" refers very narrowly to the job/profession, and "accounting" covers all aspects of the field.JQ (talk) 09:45, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Outside the dictionary reference, we don't have very much in the way of sources for this term. Accountancy may be a term that refers to a methodology, a body of learning, profession depending on how it is used. Books such as the History of Accountancy in the USA suggest that it is used in both the US and the UK. However the real question is what is the difference between "Accountancy" and "Accounting"? I still cannot answer this fundamental question but I have found a suitable definition for accountancy:
 * "Accountancy is the art of communicating financial information about a business entity to users such as shareholders and managers. The communication is generally in the form of financial statements that show in money terms that show the economic reources under the control of management. The art lies in selecting the information that is relevant to the user and is reliable."
 * Taken from "Financial accounting and reporting" (Elliot, Barry & Elliot, Jamie, FT Prentice Hall, London 2004, p.3), quoted in Corporate Reporting and Company Law By Charlotte Villiers. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I know this is an old discussion, and I don't have any sources to cite, but this is how I've been given to understand it. Accounting is a verb, and Accountancy is a noun. They're effectively different forms of the same word rather than one being a variation of the other. I studied accountancy, so that I could be an accountant and thus engage in accounting. I view accountancy as the noun which describes the concept, whereas accounting describes the act/application of that concept. As a side note, my degree says my major was accountancy with a specialty of public accounting. AaronMP84 (talk) 07:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster defines accountancy as "the profession or practice of accounting." Thus, accounting is the subject or academic discipline and accountancy is the actual job of applying that subject. That is, it's like the difference between bicycles and bicycling (maybe not the absolute best analogy, but it's what I cam up with). Given this definition, I don't think it's right to equate accounting and accountancy as purely regional variants. Obviously the terms can be used interchangeably most of the time and that does indeed follow geographic lines. But, there is a difference. Although, Merriam-Webster is an American dictionary, so maybe whatever they use across the pond will define accounting as "the profession or practice of accountancy" and then I won't know what my opinion is anymore. Gn341ram (talk) 04:37, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it's a little misleading to try to differentiate the two terms. I'm not a linguist, but for all intents and purposes the two words seem pretty much interchangeable. A good reference point might be how universities name their accounting departments; both versions are used by different universities: "Department of Accounting", "Department of Accountancy", "School of Accounting" and "School of Accountancy" are all in use. - Well-rested Talk  08:01, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I guess I'll add this here. Accountancy sounds really odd to me ears, perhaps because I'm an American, so I don't know how to edit this article to make it sound better. However, switching between the terms accounting and accountancy according to whichever country the editor is from sounds weird to me. I think we should stick to one term of the other throughout the entire article after acknowledging variations for stylistic consistency. I guess we should stick with "accountancy" since that's the main title, but I don't want to alter anything because I'm not sure on the usage exactly. Gn341ram (talk) 19:13, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm personally more used to "accounting" too, but as of now I'm not sure if we have a good reason to change the title unless we have more current information on which wording is more in use, etc (WP: CRITERIA). I don't think there's any particular reason to change every reference of accounting (accountancy) to accountancy (accounting) either. The article already makes clear that the two terms are interchangeable, so use of either word probably won't confuse anyone. - Well-rested Talk  08:11, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Current discussion
This has been discussed at length before; if you're an editor who's new to this discussion, I encourage you to have a look at the excellent arguments from 2009 and 2012 posted earlier on this talk page.

On "Accountancy" vs "Accounting" I have no preference between the terms in practice. In Canada I encounter "accounting" much more often but that obviously doesn't present a worldwide view. Previous discussions have not shown any obvious consensus for changing the name to "accounting". After the 2009 discussion, it looks like this article was replaced with a redirect to Accounting (the reverse of the current situation) based on one editor who was in favour of keeping "accountancy" being permanently site-banned, although that had very little to do with this article. The redirect was reverted, and here we are. The accountancy template was also renamed to Accounting at that time, so we now have a template which is called "accounting" in wikilinks but has the text "accountancy" at the top.

One other point worth noting is that most other articles being watched by the Accountancy Taskforce use "accounting" rather than "accountancy" (examples: Management accounting, Financial accounting, Accounting period) and either don't mention accountancy at all, or use "accounting or accountancy" like we do here. This does show a broad consensus for using "accounting" rather than "accountancy", and therefore we should rename the article, unless other editors feel strongly otherwise.

Whichever title is chosen going forward, we need to use it consistently throughout the article - get rid of all the "accountancy or accounting" text. All that's needed is a note at the very top of the article, like what's there now. Ivanvector (talk) 17:57, 28 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I've taken the liberty to shift the old discussion into a collapseybox above. There appears to be two strands of thought in the old discussion: the first considers the two terms interchangeable and therefore considers the deciding factor to be how common each term is used, while the second favors one or the other term based on the idea that the two terms are not interchangeable (e.g. have different definitions).


 * To help discussion along, I think it's pretty clear that the two words are interchangeable as words that indicate what the entirety of accounting/accountancy is about, so we should be focussing on considerations like how common either term is. Just to leave some evidence that the two are interchangeable:


 * * Universities: Both words have been used to describe the accounting/accountancy departments in unversities, and there does not even appear to be a preference based on geography. E.g. "accounting":LSE (UK), UT Austin (US), NUS (Singapore), Bocconi (Italy), Michigan (US); and "accountancy": UIUC (US), Glasgow (UK), Notre Dame (US)SMU (Singapore), CUHK (Hong Kong).


 * * Academic journals: Similarly, academic journals have used either words in their titles. E.g. The Accounting Review (by the American Accounting Association), and the Journal of Accountancy (by AICPA).


 * TL;DR: since both terms are interchangeable for describing the topic, I think the consideration here shouldn't be about the definition of each term, but rather on other guidelines in WP:TITLE, e.g. how common the words are used (WP:COMMONNAME).
 * -  Well-rested Talk  00:14, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Which term is more commonly used?
Just adding some data regarding which term is more commonly used (see WP:COMMONNAME). It does look like "accounting" is a lot more commonly-used than accountancy: - Well-rested Talk  02:30, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * From Google trends (here) set to worldwide from 2004 to present:
 * Google searches: "accounting" has much greater search interest than "accountancy" over the past years, and consistently >10 times since 2011.
 *  Related searches: "accounting" is strongly related (>= 70) to many accounting searches, especially "financial accounting", "accounting software", "accounting jobs", "business accounting" and, crucially, "what is accounting", while "accountancy" isn't strongly related to much (only one, "board of accountancy" is >= 70).
 * Regional interest (cities): the data does suggest a UK/US divide, but it looks like the US and the UK both use either term; cities in Asia appear to use both terms (for what it's worth, the blue circles seem generally darker for "accounting")
 * From Google searches ("accountancy" and "accounting", with quotations, set to any time):
 * News: "accounting" has 173,000 hits and "accountancy" has 7,310 hits.
 * Any: "accounting" has 104 million hits and "accountancy" has 9 million hits
 * In accounting academia:
 * Top-ranking journal names: Top journals (by various rankings) always use "accounting" (see BYU's list of top ranked journals, journals used in the Financial Times research rankings, and Google Scholar's top publications in accounting and taxation)
 * Academic journal names: In general, academic journals seem to predominantly use "accounting". This study of accounting journals (see Exhibit 1) lists 20 journals with "accounting" in their names and only 1 journal with "accountancy" in its name.
 * It seems pretty clear from Well-rested's research that "accounting" is the more common term in widespread usage, and the name of the article should change to reflect that. Given that this is a CD Selection article, it's important to get this right. I think it would be appropriate to post a notice about this discussion on the Accountancy Taskforce page to recruit additional editors to this discussion and establish a broad consensus for changing the article title. For the record, I am in support of changing the name to Accounting. Ivanvector (talk) 04:06, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I've left notes on both the Business and Accountancy Task Force talk pages. Given the data I too agree that the article's title should be changed to "Accounting", but let's see if we can get broader consensus before making any changes.- Well-rested Talk  05:14, 29 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Quick comment after looking up the dictionary definitions of "accounting" and "accountancy". In both British and American English, the financial reporting (i.e. what the article is about) is referred to as "accounting". The difference between "accounting" and "accountancy" only arises when we are talking about the job of being an accountant. I've added the details to the article under the etymology section.- Well-rested Talk  06:15, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

A new sidebar
Hey guys. I've prepared a new version of the accounting sidebar over over at my user page; it's transcluded on the right. This version follows the formatting of the finance sidebar, and I made some changes to the articles etc displayed—there are some pretty unimportant articles on the current sidebar, and also some very important articles are missing.

I'm planning to implement this new sidebar in a day or two (I still need to write up the documentation etc) if there are no objections, particularly regarding the overall formatting.

- Well-rested Talk  15:47, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I've implemented the change. For reference, the old version is available at my user page here.- Well-rested Talk  03:41, 31 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Looks good! I was going to suggest making a bottom-of-the-page navbox since there are a lot of links and a lot of useful information, and making the sidebar only hold the most important articles. I made a mockup of a navbox here - basically I just copied yours and reformatted it, I hope you don't mind. I don't know which articles would be considered important (maybe go by the project's rating scale?) Ivanvector (talk) 19:43, 31 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Good idea. The sidebar can be restricted to just the most important articles, while more details can go into the navbox, like how they do it over at economics. And yeah the importance rating scale would probably be a good gauge of importance.- Well-rested Talk  01:28, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Under Key concepts you are missing, e.g., unit of account, money, legal tender and capital maintenance.

There is no such thing as "major fields" in accounting. Auditing is not accounting as such.

There is also no such thing as "key accounts" in accounting in general.

Under "financial statements": balance sheet and income statement are not used in IFRS anymore. (who put together your list??)

Retained earnings is not a financial statement!!

XBRL is not a financial statement!!

Bookkeeping is the same as accounting.

Auditing is not accounting as such.

I strongly suggest you restate the previous version of the template.

CameraWallet (talk) 17:23, 1 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi CameraWallet! My changes to the template was largely to update the formatting and to make it similar to other templates like the finance one, so a lot of the issues you are bringing up are also present in the old template, e.g. in the old template, XBRL and retained earnings are both under "Financial Statements".


 * So I completely agree with you that some changes need to be made, and I'll make the changes ASAP.


 * To answer some of your specific points:
 * Retained earnings and XBRL are not part of the financial statements: You are absolutely correct. I will change these ASAP.
 * Missing concepts: You're right. I'll add some of your suggestions.
 * Fields of accounting: Yeah, I was thinking that "field" might not be the best word to use (although some sources I found use the word). Maybe "areas of accounting"?
 * Bookkeeping: Bookkeeping is actually not the same as accounting; it is only one part of the broader accounting function, i.e. bookkeeping is a subset of accounting. (See the main accounting article for the reference on bookkeeping.)


 * -  Well-rested Talk  17:42, 1 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Ok I've implemented most of your suggestions. Thanks!


 * And by the way, since you're interested in accounting, you can actually join the Business Wikiproject. They have a lot of tasks in need of help from editors, and the Accountancy taskforce has a lot of pages that need improvement. Just a suggestion. :)


 * - Well-rested Talk  17:56, 1 January 2014 (UTC)


 * The statements should follow the common names, rather than the IFRS-defined names, to guarantee a worldwide POV. Balance sheet may be called "Statement of Financial Position" per IFRS, but this is not standard everywhere, for example. Also, some companies do prepare a statement of retained earnings or statement of changes in equity, but I don't believe they are considered a standard financial statement. Ivanvector (talk) 19:19, 1 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I think the terminology used for each of the statements is one of those (many) things that is not going to satisfy everyone. There's definitely an argument for using "balance sheet", "income statement", etc, since you still hear those a lot (although I do hear "P&L" more than "income statement" in some places), but at the same time there's the argument that we're all converging to IFRS so maybe we should be using their terminology; plus it's "international" and hence could be seen as reflecting a global POV. I'm on the fence for this one, so if anyone wants to change it, do feel free to do so. - Well-rested Talk  19:47, 1 January 2014 (UTC)


 * You're probably right that it'll be difficult to get every user to agree. I would say to go with the current names of the articles (Balance sheet, Income statement, etc.) which seems to be how you have them now, at least in the template at right. If there is consensus to change to the more formal IFRS names, then change the template at that time. The problem is that the names in the Financial statements article are already updated to the IFRS names, and the links point to redirects to the common names as they are now. I think maybe the proper titles for those articles is something that will need to be resolved separately. Ivanvector (talk) 19:28, 2 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Ok, that's fine by me. - Well-rested Talk  02:01, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Page move from Accountancy to Accounting
I'm listing in detail here to reasons for the page move from Accountancy to Accounting. I don't think this will be a very contentious move because of the discussion above and because there simply doesn't seem to be much interest in this issue even after informing the business wikiproject and the task force, but I thought it would be good to list the reasons here for future editors. - Well-rested Talk  07:45, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Previous discussions

 * Older discussion mainly from 2009
 * Recent discussion from late 2013 to early 2014
 * Requests for interested parties to join: at the Wikiproject and the task force

Reasons for move
Quick comment: just by the definition of the word, the profession of accounting/accountancy, should be distinct from (and in this case a subset of) accounting/accountancy itself, like how the legal profession is not the legal system.

The title should indicate what the subject is about (WP:TITLE)

 * 1) Dictionaries: In most dictionary sources, "accounting" describes the act or system of recording and reporting financials, and can also refer to the job or profession of being an accountant; while "accountancy" describes only the job or profession of being an accountant.
 * 2) Dictionary listings for "accounting": Cambridge Business English, Cambridge British English, Merriam-Webster,Collins English, Oxford Dictionaries.
 * 3) Dictionary listings for "accountancy": Cambridge Business English, Cambridge British English, Merriam-Webster, Collins English,Oxford Dictionaries.
 * 4) Book titles: Book titles overwhelmingly use "accounting" rather than "accountancy"
 * 5) Google books: 128,000 title hits for "accounting" and 7,000 title hits for "accountancy"
 * 6) Journal titles: Prominent accounting/accountancy journal titles overwhelmingly use "accounting" rather than "accountancy".
 * 7) Sources: Financial Times' top journal used in computing business school rankings,  Google Scholar's top publications in Accounting & Taxation, BYU's top 6 journals, research paper on accounting journals.

The name more commonly used in reliable sources is preferred (WP:COMMONNAME)

 * 1) News sources: "Accounting" is mentioned far more frequently than "accountancy"
 * 2) Google news: As of the time of writing, "accounting" has 172,000 news hits and "accountancy" has 6,530 news hits
 * 3) Encylopedias: Encylopedias use "accounting" and not "accountancy"
 * 4) Global Encyclopædia Britannica: "accounting" describes the topic, and [ http://global.britannica.com/search?query=accountancy no encylopedia entry for "accountancy"]
 * 5) Encyclopedia.com: "accounting" describes the topic, and no encylopedia entry for "accountancy"
 * 6) Book mentions: "accounting" is mentioned much more frequently in books
 * 7) Google books: As of the time of writing, "accounting" has 39.4 million hits and "accountancy" has 225,000 hits.
 * 8) Other sources
 * 9) Currently-used references: Of the 55 references currently used in this article, 27 contain the word "accounting" while 7 contain the word "accountancy".

Readers should be likely to look for the title (WP:CRITERIA)

 * 1) Google search: "Accounting" has far greater search interest and hits on Google
 * 2) Google hits: As of the time of writing, "accounting" has 102 million hits and has 9 million hits
 * 3) Google trends (interest from 2004): "Accounting" has almost 10 times the search interest of "accountancy"
 * 4) Google trends (related searches from 2004): "Accounting" is strongly related to more accounting/accountancy search topics than "accountancy"

The title should be one that editors naturally use to link to the article (WP:CRITERIA)

 * 1) Wikipedia usage: "Accounting" is much more commonly used in Wikipedia titles
 * 2) Wikipedia titles search: As of the time of writing, 225 content pages have the word "accounting" in their titles, and 32 content pages have the word "accountancy" in their titles

Other comments
I don't think this page move will entail changing every single article title using "accountancy" to using "accounting". The Manual of Style should be applied to each article on a case-by-case basis.

-  Well-rested Talk  07:45, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * It is a fact that the term "accounting" has over the last few years been losing ground to "financial reporting". Accounting and financial reporting is regarded as the same concept. Authors and especially international accounting standard-setters and national accounting standard-setters and accounting authorities use the two terms as inter-changeable. Should we thus rather be pro-active and move from "accountancy" straight to "financial reporting", or is it more reasonable to give "accounting" a decade or two before the change from "accounting" to "financial reporting"? CameraWallet (talk) 19:05, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Do you have any sources for that? I strongly disagree. Financial reporting is an important facet of accounting, but they are not interchangeable terms. Accounting also involves budgeting, forecasting, capital management, business performance analysis, resource planning, problem solving, assurance ... it is a much wider field than just financial reporting. Ivanvector (talk) 19:19, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * The perfect source for the fact that "financial reporting" is directly interchangeable for "accounting" is the new title of international accounting standards. The original international accounting standards are still named International Accounting Standards. New ones are now named International Financial Reporting Standards, i.e., a direct substitute of the term "accounting" with "financial reporting": the perfect source. IFRSs now include the older IASs and the newer IFRSs. You could not ask for a better source.CameraWallet (talk) 19:57, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I think you're reading too much into the meaning of that change. IFRS are standards for financial reporting, but they are limited to just that narrow aspect of the much broader accounting function. IFRS (and IAS, and the many disparate GAAPs) provide no guidance whatsoever on those broader accounting functions, they only ensure that the information provided by accountants to other users of the information follow established, consistent standards. That is a very important part of accounting(/accountancy) but it is not the whole picture. Ivanvector (talk) 21:00, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree with Ivanvector here. IFRS/GAAP generally don't apply to management accounting, for example, but management accounting is clearly part of accounting. And anyway, article titles are based on the term that is currently most commonly used, not the term that may be most commonly used in future. - Well-rested Talk  04:24, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree with Well-rested that "article titles are based on the term that is currently most commonly used". Google search for "accounting" 112 000 000. Google search for "financial reporting" 289 000 000. That settles it then: We have to use "financial reporting" since it has more than double the number of Google search results. CameraWallet (talk) 22:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * "...Article titles are based on the term that is currently most commonly used" to describe the topic. "Financial reporting" does not describe the topic of this article, it is only one aspect of the broad field of accounting. As an example of what I mean, "orchard" returns 27.6M ghits, but "apple fruit" returns 163M ghits, but we're not going to rename orchard -> apple on this basis because orchards do more than just grow apples. "Apple" does not describe the topic of orchard, in very much the same way as "financial reporting" does not describe the topic of this article. In the abstract, it might be worthwhile to create an article on "financial reporting" and have it linked from account[ing|ancy] as a "main article" from a reporting sub-header, but as I just checked, financial reporting is already a redirect to financial statement so this is basically moot. Ivanvector (talk) 22:58, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * CameraWallet, just to give a helpful example, the most searched-for movie in 2013 was Man of Steel, but that does not mean that every movie article on Wikipedia should be renamed to "Man of Steel", because different movies generally have different articles, and the title must reflect what the article is about. In this case, financial reporting is not the same as accounting. A good example (perhaps not the best example but it should suffice) is that there are separate standards for financial reporting and for auditing, e.g. International Financial Reporting Standards vs International Standards on Auditing. - Well-rested Talk  07:15, 9 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Let me confess: I prefer "accounting". However, I was just alerting you to the fact that "accounting" and "financial reporting" are being used as interchangeable, especially as far as IFRS discussion papers, exposure drafts, IFRIC IASB Interpretations Committee work, etc., etc. is concerned. It is now considered "old-fashioned" to use "accounting" as the all-encompassing term. It is now generally accepted to use the term "financial reporting" as the all encompassing term. (In my opinion auditing is not accounting. Then writing is also accounting and the numbering system is also accounting if auditing were to be considered accounting.) I use the term "accounting" or "accounting / financial reporting" in my writings about accounting / financial reporting. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia: a source of the status quo, a reflection of what is out there, of what is actually happening. I am strongly of the opinion that the two terms are being used as interchangeable with "financial reporting" being a full length ahead of "accounting". Accounting / financial reporting articles on Wikipedia are, in my opinion, so-so - certainly not of excellent quality compared to the quality of US GAAP and IFRS. I was trying to correct a little bit of this weak image of accounting / financial reporting articles on Wikipedia. So, "accounting" is fine with me, but, I honestly do not think that is actually a true encyclopedic reflection of the status quo. CameraWallet (talk) 15:31, 9 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Ah ok. I suspected that you were fixating on "financial reporting" partly because you like a good debate. (I think most of us secretly do!) But anyway just to continue the debate, I think most sources would consider auditing as part of accounting. E.g. it's taught as part of accounting degrees, accounting academics routinely list it as an area of accounting research, it shows up in accounting textbooks, just to name a few examples. However auditing can be seen as a different concept from financial reporting: financial reporting is the work of producing the financial reports, and auditing is the assurance about the financial reports, and hence there are financial reporting standards, and auditing standards. And the IFRS etc could be focussing on the term "financial reporting" simply because they deal with the financial reporting standards. But anyway, even if it really is the case that some other term is replacing "accounting" (hypothetically!), the correct title would still be "accounting" until the other term becomes the most commonly-used phrase used to describe the entire topic/subject of accounting. - Well-rested Talk  03:49, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was move per request. As noted, this appears to be the common name and to the extent an English variation issue is implicated, this falls under WP:COMMONALITY.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Accountancy → Accounting – Requesting move over redirect. Reasons listed in great detail at Talk:Accountancy. To summarize, "accounting" better reflects what the article is about (WP:TITLE), it is the far more common name (WP:COMMONNAME), and it is the far more commonly looked-for term (WP:CRITERIA). The move appears uncontroversial because there has been discussion at the talk page regarding reasons for the move, and there have been no additional discussants even after informally requesting for comments at the relevant Wikiproject and Task Force over a week ago.  Well-rested Talk  07:59, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Support as requester. :) - Well-rested Talk  16:53, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Support as I've said before, per WP:COMMONNAME. "Accounting" appears to be the much more common term in worldwide general usage, with "accountancy" limited to within Britain and some former Commonwealth countries, as well as academia. My only concern with this was that it had previously been controversial, but that now seems to have been one single editor's personal vendetta, and they are now permanently blocked partly as a result of that crusade. Ivanvector (talk) 17:01, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment isn't this an WP:ENGVAR issue? -- 70.50.148.122 (talk) 03:35, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Not quite, at least not based on previous discussion. Rather than being two differing national usages, this is a globally standard usage ("accounting") versus usage that seems common only in British English and in academia ("accountancy"). Therefore this doesn't quite fall under WP:ENGVAR, but WP:COMMONALITY would seem to prefer the global common usage, and COMMONNAME certainly does. Ivanvector (talk) 04:35, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Additional comment: I don't think "accountancy" is in much use in academia at all. The academic accounting journal titles overwhelmingly use "accounting". Also, regarding ENGVAR, from the dictionary sources: in British English, both terms are in use with "accountancy" referring to the job or profession of being an accountant, a narrower definition than what the article is about. (In American English, "accounting" also refers to the profession.) - Well-rested  Talk  04:44, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Support for several reasons--you could even include WP:CONCISE if you REALLY wanted Face-smile.svg Red Slash 06:38, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. "Accountancy" as the subject/topic name isn't wrong. In my experience, although one might use "accountancy" in a more general sense interchangeably with "accounting", usage of "accounting" is definitely more common. Accountants and other professionals tend to refer to "the accounting profession", "accounting treatment", "accounting standards" and "no accounting for taste" ;-) .--  Ohc  ¡digame! 02:36, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Color Accounting/Colour Accounting
I am new to editing Wikipedia and would like some help with adding a sub-article on Color Accounting.

Color Accounting is a proprietary system of representing accounting graphically and with the logical use of color. It's principle use is in education, at high school and university level, and in corporate training. Since it is a proprietary system, I'm conscious not to be seen to be promoting a commercial product as advertising. However there are verifiable facts that I believe would be interesting/valid/useful to list, like patents granted, trademarks registered, description of the system's functionality, history of the system's development, commercial users, published books and products, and possibly some biographic information of the inventors.

I'm thinking I'd like to show a draft submission to an experienced editor for input on structure, contents, suitability, where to locate the article etc. I'd appreciate any offers of help.

Plframpton (talk) 20:02, 7 June 2014 (UTC) plframpton June 7, 2014

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Accounting. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20130819184954/http://acpa.org.uk/criteria-for-entry.aspx to http://www.acpa.org.uk/criteria-for-entry.aspx
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20131011082948/http://www.icaew.com:80/en/qualifications-and-programmes/better-qualified/ to http://www.icaew.com/en/qualifications-and-programmes/better-qualified/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 09:41, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Me Myself and I
Hi ! I am Anmalylika from Rizal — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anmalylika (talk • contribs) 00:36, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Staff accountant
"Staff accountant" is just an accountant by another name. See Talk:Staff accountant. 331dot (talk) 03:19, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Since there was no discussion, I added the info to Accountant, and boldly changed the staff accountant stub to a redirect.  Onel 5969  TT me 12:48, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Ancient pronunciation
On 2018-09-01 the section on "Etymology" included the following: 'The word "accountant" is derived from the French word compter, which is also derived from the Italian and Latin word computare. The word was formerly written in English as "accomptant", but in process of time the word, which was always pronounced by dropping the "p", became gradually changed both in pronunciation and in orthography to its present form.[26]'

QUESTION: How can anyone possibly know ancient pronunciations, e.g., 'which was always pronounced by dropping the "p"'?

I changed this to the following:


 * The word "accountant" is derived from the French word compter, which is also derived from the Italian and Latin word computare. The word was formerly written in English as "accomptant", but in process of time the "p" was dropped and the orthography evolved to its present form.[26]

DavidMCEddy (talk) 05:41, 1 September 2018 (UTC)


 * If your reason for the edit is purely "How can anyone possibly know ..." then your edit seems to be based purely on your disbelief. I do know that, in general, reconstructing old _and_ ancient pronunciations is possible, though the means may astonish. (e.g. using old songs which were known to rhyme and scan and thus seeing that "back then" the words were said/sung quite differently from nowadays).


 * For reference, this same cite and quote is used at accountant. And which has a link to the archive.org scan of that book, where you can see the quote yourself.


 * As always, if you can find and cite other knowledgeable published opinions it will be appreciated. Otherwise, at Wikipedia we give deference to citable opinion. Shenme (talk) 06:06, 1 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the mention that accountant "has a link to the archive.org scan of the book". I looked at that.
 * To say that 'it was always pronounced by dropping the "p"' suggests that the word has existed through eternity -- or at least as long as language or the "English" language. But which version of English?
 * The reference mentions Latin and French, so presumably the word come to England and to English with the Norman conquest, and the "p" may already have been dropped from Latin in the evolution of the French and Norman languages before 1066.
 * However that book is hardly a scholarly treatise on linguistics: It could be cited with authority on recommended accounting practices a hundred year ago, but I wouldn't take it as authoritative on a matter like this.
 * And I appreciate your comment about "reconstructing old _and_ ancient pronunciations" from old songs and poems, etc. However, there are different dialects of any modern language, and just because a word was pronounced a certain way by the author of a particular song or poem does not mean it was pronounced that way by all.
 * But I don't feel a need to push this any further.
 * I'd be pleased to get your feedback on the another matter, which I will put in a new section. DavidMCEddy (talk) 07:45, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Accounting as a percent of total employment in the US
Would you support adding to this article a figure showing "Accountants and auditors" as a percent of total employment in the US, 1910-2000? Such a plot is available as Figure 3b in Wyatt and Hecker (2006). That was published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the US federal government, which should mean that it is in the public domain. I plan to enter the complete citation into Wikidata / Wikicite, then extract the image from the pdf and upload it to Wikimedia Commons. If they don't accept that, I will read the numbers from that chart manually and recreate it myself, so it's my own art work. Then they will accept it. I think this plot says something important about the evolution of accountancy as part of the modern economy, though I'm not sure entirely what.

I also plan to include a brief discussion and comparison of that plot with current BLS data on accountants and auditors and "bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks", partly to make the point that what one counts as an "accountant" is a matter of definition that evolves over time -- and BLS seems to use different definitions at different times. I don't know what definition of "Accountants and auditors" was used for that plot in Wyatt and Hecker (2006): Did the percentage of total labor devoted to bookkeeping in the US increase by a factor of 14 between 1910 and 2000? I don't know the answer to that, and I don't know if I'll find it in Wyatt and Hecker. I may write them and ask.

I trust you would support the addition of such a plot and a brief discussion of these questions of definition? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 07:45, 1 September 2018 (UTC)




 * I updated the analysis using primarily the source used by Wyatt and Hecker and posted my plot of that to Wikimedia Commons; see the image included here.  I also documented carefully exactly what I did so others can replicate, modifly or update it at will.  DavidMCEddy (talk) 04:49, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Request semi-protection
This article has received 10 different edits that were obvious vandalism from, if I counted correctly, 9 different IP addresses since 2018-07-23. The most recent one added the word, "bye" at the end of a section

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Accounting&diff=next&oldid=859041887).

On July 23, someone identified with an IP address inserted 5 apostrphes in a note and several other curious Mediawiki markup language changes. Please check yourself.

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:27, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Padlock-dash2.svg Not done: requests for increases to the page protection level should be made at Requests for page protection. Saucy[talk – contribs] 04:04, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

what is book keeping
बुक कीपिंग इस अन आर्ट ऑफ रेकॉर्डिंग ट्रांसकशन्स इन या सिस्टिमॅटिक मन्नेर — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.91.221.49 (talk) 06:31, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Political campaign accounting
Does this warrant its own section? What distinguishes it as a separate branch of accounting rather than an application of accounting, like “film/movie accounting”, “charity accounting”, “government accounting” or similar? Toby64 (talk) 11:37, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Economic management sciences
Because I want to know batter 41.116.148.250 (talk) 12:20, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Definition
Englesh 2401:4900:3158:1765:0:6A:D851:8E01 (talk) 05:42, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

accounting
What is accounting 27.63.17.167 (talk) 10:13, 16 February 2023 (UTC)