accounting

Practice and body of knowledge concerned primarily with (1) methods for recording transactions, (2) keeping financial records, (3) performing internal audits, (4) reporting and analyzing financial information to the management, and (5) advising on taxation matters. It is a systematic process of identifying, recording, measuring, classifying, verifying, summarizing, interpreting and communicating financial information. It reveals profit or loss for a given period, and the value and nature of a firm's assets, liabilities and owners' equity. Accounting provides information on the (1) resources available to a firm, (2) the means employed to finance those resources, and (3) the results achieved through their use.

Young companies have to get the word out, but they also can go broke doing it. A decade ago, America Online spent so much money flooding the planet with free trial software that it tried to mask the bleeding by capitalizing those expenses on its balance sheet. (Regulators later nixed that accounting treatment, wiping out millions in accounting profits.) What percentage of sales should go toward marketing? As with sales, there is no one rule of thumb.

• How Management Can Make High Earnings
• Business Owner's Actions