Accounting & Bookkeeping Services

Accounting & Bookkeeping Services provided by Accountants in Miami. Professional Accountants rendering accounting and bookkeeping services.

Accounting or accountancy is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and nonfinancial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the “language of business” measures the results of an organization’s economic activities and conveys this information to a variety of users, including investors, creditors, management, and regulators. Practitioners of accounting are known as accountants. The terms “accounting” and “financial reporting” are often used as synonyms.

Accounting & Bookkeeping Services can be divided into several fields including financial accounting, management accounting, external auditing, tax accounting, and cost accounting. Accounting information systems are designed to support accounting functions and related activities. Financial accounting focuses on the reporting of an organization’s financial information, including the preparation of financial statements, to the external users of the information, such as investors, regulators, and suppliers; and management accounting focuses on the measurement, analysis, and reporting of information for internal use by management. The recording of financial transactions, so that summaries of the financials may be presented in financial reports, is known as bookkeeping, of which double-entry bookkeeping is the most common system.

Even though Accounting & Bookkeeping Services has existed in various forms and levels of sophistication throughout many human societies, and the double-entry accounting system in use today was developed in medieval. Today, accounting is facilitated by accounting organizations such as standard-setters, accounting firms, and professional bodies. Financial statements are usually audited by accounting firms and are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). GAAP is set by various standard-setting organizations such as the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in the United States and the Financial Reporting Council in the United Kingdom. As of 2012, “all major economies” have plans to converge towards or adopt the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

Financial accounting

Financial accounting (or financial accountancy) in the field of Accounting & Bookkeeping Services concerned with the summary, analysis, and reporting of financial transactions related to a business. This involves the preparation of financial statements available for public use. Stockholders, suppliers, banks, employees, government agencies, business owners, and other stakeholders are examples of people interested in receiving such information for decision-making purposes.

Accounting & Bookkeeping Services and Financial accountancy is governed by both local and international accounting standards. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) is the standard framework of guidelines for financial accounting used in any given jurisdiction. It includes the standards, conventions, and rules that accountants follow in recording and summarizing and in the preparation of financial statements.

On the other hand, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is a set of passionate accounting standards stating how particular types of transactions and other events should be reported in financial statements. IFRS are issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). With IFRS becoming more widespread on the international scene, consistency in financial reporting has become more prevalent between global organizations.

While financial Accounting & Bookkeeping Services is used to prepare accounting information for people outside the organization or not involved in the day-to-day running of the company, managerial accounting provides accounting information to help managers make decisions to manage the business.

Financial accounting and financial reporting are often used as synonyms.

1. According to International Financial Reporting Standards: the objective of financial reporting is:

To provide financial information that is useful to exist and potential investors, lenders, and other creditors in making decisions about providing resources to the reporting entity.

1. According to the European Accounting Association:

Capital maintenance is a competing objective of financial reporting.

Financial accounting is the preparation of financial statements that can be consumed by the public and the relevant stakeholders. Accounting & Bookkeeping Services financial information would be useful to users if such qualitative characteristics are present. When producing financial statements, the following must comply: Fundamental Qualitative Characteristics:

Relevance: Relevance is the capacity of financial information to influence the decision of its users. The ingredients of relevance are the predictive value and confirmatory value. Materiality is a sub-quality of relevance. Information is considered material if its omission or misstatement could influence the economic decisions of users taken based on the financial statements.

Faithful Representation: Faithful representation means that the actual effects of the transactions shall be properly accounted for and reported in the financial statements. The words and numbers must match what happened in the transaction. The ingredients of faithful representation are completeness, neutrality, and free from error.

Tax accounting

U.S. tax accounting refers to Accounting & Bookkeeping Services for tax purposes in the United States. Unlike most countries, the United States has a comprehensive set of accounting principles for tax purposes, prescribed by tax law, which is separate and distinct from Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

The Internal Revenue Code governs the application of tax accounting. Section 446 sets the basic rules for tax accounting. Tax accounting under section 446(a) emphasizes consistency for a tax accounting method with references to the applied financial accounting to determine the proper method. The taxpayer must choose a tax accounting method using the taxpayer’s financial accounting method as a reference point.

Types of tax accounting methods

 Proper accounting methods are described in section 446(c)(1) to (4) which permits cash, accrual, and other methods approved by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) including combinations.

After choosing an Accounting & Bookkeeping Services tax accounting method, under section 446(b) the IRS has wide discretion to re-compute the taxable income of the taxpayer by changing the accounting method to be used by the taxpayer to reflect the taxpayer’s income.

If the taxpayer engages in more than one business, the taxpayer may use a different method for each business according to section 446(d).

If the taxpayer wants to change a tax accounting method, section 446 of the Internal Revenue Code requires the taxpayer to obtain the consent of the Internal Revenue Service. There are two kinds of changes: obtaining a letter of approval from the IRS, and obtaining a series of more routine changes, each of which is an automatic change. To get the automatic change, the taxpayer must fill out a form and return it to the IRS.

The taxpayer can adopt another method if the taxpayer files a tax return using that method for two consecutive years. This is different from changing a tax accounting method under the release of the IRS because, in the case of adopting another method, the IRS may assess fines and reallocate taxable income. If the taxpayer wants to return to the previous method, the taxpayer must ask for permission from the IRS, following the 446(e) procedure.

Accounting & Bookkeeping Services or the taxpayer fails to request a change of method of accounting then, according to section 446(f), the taxpayer does so at his or her peril by exposure to penalties.