Useful Accounting & Finance Definitions:
Account: A record of financial transactions for an asset or individual, such as at a bank, brokerage, credit card company, or retail store.
Accountant: One who is skilled in the practice of accounting or who is in charge of public or private accounts. An accountant is responsible for reporting financial results, whether for a company or for an individual, in accordance with government and regulatory authority rules.
Accounting: The systematic recording, reporting, and analysis of financial transactions of a business.
Actuary: A specialist in the mathematics of risk, especially as it relates to insurance calculations such as premiums, reserves, dividends, and insurance and annuity rates. They work for insurance companies to evaluate applications based on risk.
Audit: An examination and verification of a company's financial and accounting records and supporting documents by a professional, such as a Certified Public Accountant.
Auditor: An individual qualified (at the state level) to conduct audits.
Bookkeeper is a person who keeps the books of an organisation. The organisation might be a business, a charity or a local sports club.
Bookkeeping is the recording of all financial transactions undertaken by a business (or an individual).
Chartered Accountant (CA) is the title of members of a certain professional accountancy associations in the Commonwealth countries and Ireland. The term chartered originally referred to the Royal Charter under which the earliest bodies were incorporated. Subjects examined include financial accounting, management accounting, auditing, taxation and company law. In the UK, there are no licence requirements for an individual to be describe himself/herself or practice as an accountant (except in the areas of audit or insolvency) but a Chartered Accountant must be a member of one of the following organisations:
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW) (designatory letters ACA or FCA) Institute of Chartered Accountants of
Scotland (ICAS) (designatory letters CA)
Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI) (designatory letters ACA or FCA)
Chief Financial Officer (CFO): This is the senior manager who is responsible for overseeing the financial activities of an entire company. This includes signing checks, monitoring cash flow, and financial planning. The CFO is similar to a treasurer or controller.
Costing System: An accounting system established to monitor a company's costs, providing management with information on operations and performance.
Finance: A branch of economics concerned with resource allocation as well as resource management, acquisition and investment. Simply, finance deals with matters related to money and the markets.
Financial Accounting: Reporting of the financial position and performance of a firm through financial statements issued to external users on a periodic basis.
Financial Analyst: An employee of a bank, brokerage, advisor, or mutual fund who studies companies and makes buy and sell recommendations, often specializing in a single sector or industry. Financial analysts use a wide variety of techniques for researching and making recommendations. The reports and recommendations they publish are often used by traders, mutual fund managers, portfolio managers and investors in their decision making processes. also called securities analyst or analyst.
Financial Controller: In most organizations the controller is the top managerial and financial accountant. The controller supervises the accounting department and assists management in interpreting and utilizing managerial accounting information.
Independent Auditor: A Certified Public Accountant who provides a company with an accountant's opinion but who is not otherwise affiliated with the company.
Managerial Accounting: The key difference between managerial and financial accounting is that managerial accounting information is aimed at helping managers within the organization make decisions. In contrast, financial accounting is aimed at providing information to parties outside the organization. This is also known as "cost accounting."
Job: A regular activity performed in exchange for payment, especially as one's trade, occupation, or profession.
Payroll: The financial record of employees' salaries, wages, bonuses, net pay, and deductions.
Tax: A fee charged ("levied") by a government on a product, income, or activity. If tax is levied directly on personal or corporate income, then it is a direct tax. If tax is levied on the price of a good or service, then it is called an indirect tax. The purpose of taxation is to finance government expenditure. One of the most important uses of taxes is to finance public goods and services, such as street lighting and street cleaning. Since public goods and services do not allow a non-payer to be excluded, or allow exclusion by a consumer, there cannot be a market in the good or service, and so they need to be provided by the government or a quasi-government agency, which tend to finance themselves largely through taxes.
VAT: Value Added Tax. A consumption tax which is levied at each stage of production based on the value added to the product at that stage.
