6.1 MEANING OF ACCOUNTING POLICIES Accounting Policies refer to specific accounting principles and methods of applying these principles adopted by the enterprise in the preparation and presentation of financial statements. Policies are based on various accounting concepts, principles and conventions that have already been explained in Unit 2 of Chapter 1. There is no single list of accounting policies, which are applicable to all enterprises in all circumstances. Enterprises operate in diverse and complex environmental situations and so they have to adopt various policies. The choice of specific accounting policy appropriate to the specific circumstances in which the enterprise is operating, calls for considerate judgement by the management. ICAI has been trying to reduce the number of acceptable accounting policies through Guidance Notes and Accounting Standards in its combined efforts with the government, other regulatory agencies and
The Committee on Terminology set up by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants formulated the following definition of accounting in 1961:
“Accounting is the art of recording, classifying, and summarising in a significant manner and in terms of money,transactions and events which are, in part at least, of a financial character, and interpreting the result thereof.”As per this definition, accounting is simply an art of record keeping. The process of accounting starts by firstidentifying the events and transactions which are of financial character and then be recorded in the books of account. This recording is done in Journal or subsidiary books, also known as primary books. Every good record keeping system includes suitable classification of transactions and events as well as their summarisation for ready reference. After the transactions and events are recorded, they are transferred to secondary books i.e. Ledger. In ledger, transactions and events are classified in terms of income, expense, assets and liabilities according to their characteristics and summarised in profit and loss account and balance sheet. Essentially the transactions and events are to be measured in terms of money.Measurement in terms of money means measuring at the ruling currency of a country, for example, rupee in India, dollar in U.S.A. and like. The transactions and events must have at least in part, financial characteristics. The inauguration of a new branch of a bank is an event without having financial character, while the business disposed of by the branch is an event having financial character. Accounting also interprets the recorded, classified and summarised transactions andevents.
However, the above-mentioned definition does not reflect the present day accounting function. The dimension of accounting is much broader than that described in the above definition. According to the above definition, accounting ends with interpretation of the results of the financial transactions and events but in the modern world with the diversification of management and ownership, globalisation of business and society gaining more interest in the functioning of the enterprises, the importance of communicating the accounting results has increased and therefore, this requirement of communicating and motivating informed judgement has also become the part of accounting as defined in the widely accepted definition of accounting, given by the American Accounting Association in 1966 which treated accounting as:
“The process of identifying, measuring and communicating economic information to permit informed judgments and decisions by the users of accounts.”
In 1970, the Accounting Principles Board (APB) of American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) enumerated the functions of accounting as follows:
“The function of accounting is to provide quantitative information, primarily of financial nature, about economic entities, that is needed to be useful in making economic decisions.”
Thus, accounting may be defined as the process of recording, classifying, summarising, analysing and interpreting the financial transactions and communicating the results thereof to the persons interested in such information.
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