If you are in business in Singapore, no matter the scale of your operations, accounting services are essential for you. In fact, accounting is important to anyone who deals with money whether in employment or in business.
Therefore, nearly everyone can benefit from a basic explanation of concepts mostly used in accounting.
On a personal level, accounting principles would help you prepare budgets, and manage your finances better. If you’re in business, an understanding of accounting concepts will help you raise questions about transactions, understand where money is coming from and where it goes and interpret financial data generated by your accounting services provider.
Below are basic accounting concepts mostly used in the financial world.
Dual Entry Concept
The double entry concept is perhaps as old as the discipline of accounting is. It’s universal and is used to portray how accurate transactional records are.
The principle that guides this concept is that every financial transaction that occurs jas at least an equal and opposite effect in a complimenting account. That means every entry affects at least two accounts. As such, all transactions are recorded as either a debit or a credit depending on the overall effect of the transaction.
If you carefully watch your accounting services provider, you’ll notice that they’ll record entries that increase an asset or decreases a liability or equity account on as debits. Credits, on the other hand, are entries that decrease a business’ an asset or expense account.
Accounting Equation
Development of the Dual entry concept is the accounting equation. It’s a foundational equation which all accounting services providers in Singapore.
The equation has three components, assets, Liabilities and Shareholders’ equity, and it is written as:
Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders equity
From the equation, you can see that what a business owns (for generating income) is comprised of what that entrepreneur borrows and what investors inject.
The Going Concern Concept
When we talk of the going concern concept or going concern assumption, it simply means that accounting services providers, as well as other stakeholders, treat the business with a view that it will continue in its operations and fulfil its obligations in the foreseeable future. In other words that the business is projected to have a long life and there are no concerns about its’ sustenance in the future. Companies that foresee such a future are said to be a going concern while those expected to shut down are not a going concern.
Relevance
Whenever you contract a firm or an individual to provide accounting services in Singapore for your business, you’ll expect them to furnish you with relevant information. That is in adherence to the relevance principle of accounting that demands accountants to give information that can influence management decisions, that is, it should help the consumers to predict the outcome – predictive value, and confirm previous predictions – confirmative value. For instance, revenue records are useful in performing sales forecasts as well as confirm previous forecasts.
Fair Representation
This concept places accounting service at the same range as a judge or a referee in a match. Accounting services in Singapore must provide information that is not only relevant (as stated above) but also complete, objective and accurate in order for it to be a fair representation.
These concepts are just a few but are the most used concepts in the financial world.