Definition
Accounting is a discipline, branch of the Public Accounting that is in charge of quantifying, measuring and analyzing the economic reality, the operations of the organizations, in order to facilitate the direction and control presenting the previously registered information, in a systematic way for different interested parts. Into the accounting records transactions, internal changes or any other event that affects an entity financially.
The purpose of accounting is to provide information at any given time on the results obtained over a period of time, which is useful to its users, in decision making, both for the control of past management, and for the estimates of future results, providing such decisions of rationality and efficiency.
It is a discipline that follows the method to generate and then apply certain theory and also processes, which are:
Accounting theory: Set consisting of rules, standards, principles, techniques, procedures, criteria and instruments that are the basis of accounting.
Accounting process: A set of steps that are part of the development for the fulfillment of the goals that an entity has, which are: systematization, valuation, processing, evaluation and finally the result in information.
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.