A BASIC BOOKKEEPING AND ACCOUNTING COURSE
  • Home
  • Course Content
  • Accounting Simulator
  • Knowledge
    • Questions
    • Definitions
    • Bookkeeping & Accounting Tutorials
  • Support
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Get Notified

Definition: Accounting

Learn bookkeeping and accounting in 8 hours
Definition of Accounting

What is Accounting?

Accounting is the process of recording financial transactions in a bookkeeping Journal in chronological order. The business's journal provides an accounting (retelling) of the business's events over time. Financial transactions include owner investments, purchases from vendors, customer sales and loans. All of these events are recorded in the business's Journal in a similar way as to how you would record an entry in a personal journal. When a bookkeeper records a financial transaction, the bookkeeper will "make a journal entry".

In order to efficiently interpret a business's Journal entries, each journal entry is sorted into account categories. For example, if a business purchased $500 of printer paper, the printer paper could be sorted to a Supplies account. An account is just a group/category of like items.

All the account categories combined as one group is referred to as the business's General Ledger of Accounts. A simple listing of the accounts contained in the General Ledger of Accounts is called the business's Chart of Accounts. The General Ledger also gives an accounting of the business's transactions, but does so according to account categories. For example, the Supplies account would give an accounting of business supplies. Remember the word accounting means to retell a story.

Once the entries of a business's journal have been sorted to the General Ledger of Accounts, an accountant can interpret the results and create accounting financial statements that describe trends like cash flow, net profit and owner's equity.

Continue Learning in an Interactive-Accounting Textbook

​Over 4+ Hours of Free Lessons

The Addictive Accounting course has a purpose:

To help you quickly master the fundamentals of bookkeeping and accounting!

  • Simplified - created for students and business owners
  • Comprehensive - an interactive bookkeeping and accounting textbook
  • Practice Make Perfect - in a hands-on bookkeeping simulator
  • Learn Finance - cash, profit, equity, and balance statements
  • Quiz Yourself - test your comprehension with instant feedback
  • Career Boost - communicate finance with confidence
  • At Your Pace - complete the course in a week or a weekend​
  • Teacher's Aid - can be used as an auxiliary tool to enhance learning
  • CPA Exam Prep - review fundamentals to greatly improve your score

​If you are a student who is planning on studying accounting, or a student who is struggling to learn the concepts, this course is for you. If you want an A grade, take this prep course! If you are business owner who wants to fully understand their personal bookkeeping, this course is also for you.

Practice Accounting in a Bookkeeping Simulator

Image practice in accounting simulator
Rather than just read about bookkeeping and accounting, learn and practice accounting in a hands-on bookkeeping simulation. Learn more about our accounting simulation app and see what you can learn for free in the Addictive Accounting course.

Over 4 Hours of Free Course Content,
No Ads,
​and No Personal Data Collected

Image view in Apple App Store
Image view in Google Play

For iPads, iPhones, and Android phones and tablets

Back to Definitions

Image logo of Addictive Accounting
Addictive Accounting is a product of:
One Thumb Learning logo
Interactive Learning On The Go
Headquartered: Bend, OR, USA
Home
Course Content
Accounting Simulator
Download
​​Questions
Terms and Definitions
Online Tutorials
About Us
Contact Us
Privacy Policy
  • Home
  • Course Content
  • Accounting Simulator
  • Knowledge
    • Questions
    • Definitions
    • Bookkeeping & Accounting Tutorials
  • Support
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Get Notified