ABSTRACT
Accountancy is a fundamental function in all businesses. It is all-pervasive, ranging from the most trivial expenditures of petty cash to the very topmost level of financial management, take-overs, mergers, amalgamations, reconstructions and winding-up procedures. Every student of business administration should ideally be pursuing at the same time the study of accountancy, unless a sound background has already been achieved earlier. For the benefit of those who have no background in accountancy, this chapter does begin with a brief account of double-entry book-keeping based upon the author's best-selling publication Book-keeping Made Simple. It cannot be more than a brief introduction to show how routine book-keeping records are used to find the profits of a business. Every type of business uses these records, either in manual or computerised form, but the actual preparation of the final accounts section does vary with partnerships, limited companies, public authorities and non-profit-making societies such as clubs and associations (such as the Automobile Association, for example). We cannot linger, however, to go into these matters, which are part of the study of elementary accounting. We must press on to consider higher level matters. First, then, a brief recapitulation of basic accounting as we consider Fig. 10.1.
