What Surprised about Accounting - Essay Example

The paper “What Surprised about Accounting?" is an  intriguing example of an essay on finance & accounting. To me, Accounts have always meant numbers that represent incomes and expenditure on a personal level. In business, they have come to mean measurement of the results by means of profits earned over the quarter or a year and to disclose the values of accounts receivable and payable. They have also meant to reveal the cost of transactions and state of capital and investments.

When I moved to investment in the stock market the numbers represented the growth or decline in the value of shares of stock based on sales performances, profits, and size of companies. As an ordinary person, accounting never played an important role for me except for the purposes of tax and bookkeeping.

However, when I took the course in accounts, a whole new world opened up. I found that numbers speak as much as words do and are equally eloquent. They can be as exciting as a story and could both guide or deceive and it was important to learn about them in the same ways as we learn to handle the written word.

I now know that an annual report is a spread out the analyzed journal for the benefit of shareholders and the general public. I had always preferred to go with a company that showed “profits,” believing that the higher profit represented better net income and better prospects. But I learned that these numbers could be engineered and did not represent the true or fair values or the real worth of the company. 

The course showed me to appreciate the meaning of other numbers. The Accounting course taught me to look at the numbers with their own definition in the annual reports in order to find out facts behind them. Movements of these numbers always disclose the activities of the company in many ways and reflect on the behavioral pattern of is decision-makers. I found out that number talk in annual reports. By learning how to look at an annual report of a company, its balance sheet, income statement, retained earnings and cash flow statements, I found out surprisingly that net income is not the only number matters.

Being an entrepreneur I learned early in life that there are risks in business but this course will teach me how to understand and handle it. I have learned to ask more direct questions instead of focusing only on tax saving. I am now also able to point out the questionable items, such as write-offs, investments, and interest and to understand their effects on accounts. Overall I have moved from the state of looking at accounts as a result of my efforts to using it as a tool for improving my own company’s performance.

 To quote my tutor, this accounting course will not be teaching us how to become an accountant, rather it will educate us about how to evaluate and analyze a company’s report from the perspective of both the management as well as the investor.

I look forward in anticipation of eventually learning topics that will include the relationships between accounting information and its effects on decision-making, the role of accounting on strategic issues, the development of accounting standards, and the unique roles of accounting within specific industries and sectors.