What Accountants do behind closed doors

The first thing you learn in financial accounting is that numbers rule. Everything operates on numbers. Numbers form the wheels of this number machine, and numbers oil the joints and all the moving parts. If you have a problem with arithmetic, accounting is a no-go area! My guess is, if you are slow to learn new languages, accounting will be a hard place to live. Accountants speak to these number machines and keep them oiled. LOL!

Here is the thing though. In the first course of accounting (290) I learned that accountants try to confuse you almost completely with a new language that contradicts normal vocabulary. For example, the words debit and credit mean totally nothing and everything at the same time. Don't take my word for it, ask anybody who has studied financial accounting about the double entry system!

Accountants create a shadow account for each transaction. They impose a T-account on each account that comes along and mix these confusing things together, the double entry, debit and credit sides. When you add a number to the debit side you are told you increase the account. When you add a digit or digits to the credit side you are told in fact you are decreasing that account. Okay, really!

By the way, debits are always the left side of the T-account and credits are always the right side of the T-account. Here now is where the confusion really gets at you. Some accounts are on the right side of the Big accounting formula which Accountants revere. You dare not cause an imbalance to the ultimate accounting formula which stipulates: Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders' Equity. I heard an accountants swear by this formula, the so-called basic accounting formula. I doubt anyone can pass the accounting course without memorizing this formula and without gaining a working knowledge of it.

I am not even going to try and get into the fun of trying to balance the shadow and explicit accounts that accountants work with. No wonder they mostly work behind closed doors. Lol! But let me say this. Accounts on the left side of the big formula are in the Assets group which includes cash and other short-term and long term economic resources; among them tangible and intangible ones. On the right side one finds many more accounts under liabilities and shareholders' equity.

The best way to describe the accounts on the right side of the big accounting formula is to say they behave strangely and often in ways you don't want to know! They all obey the first rule, anything added on the left side of their T-account nature is an addition. However, because of the difference between liabilities and shareholders' equity, they beg to be treated differently under the microscope. Accountants did this to discourage people like me from understanding how to do simple arithmetic. So, if you must learn accounting, then learn more about the Revenues, Expenses and Dividends which appear under the title Shareholders' equity.

One of the things about liabilities is that no one really likes them. A liability is a debt, a legal obligation that comes about in the course of conducting business. They must be settled over time, often by transferring assets, or benefits including money, services or goods with economic value.

It is not possible to overemphasize the importance of this formula here, except to say you must learn it and it is not too hard.

All of this stuff is learned in the first few days of the course. Then comes the business transactions and the resulting accounts. You quickly realize that it would be impossible to do these calculations sitting with a bunch of people running up and down beside you. You must focus or lose it. It is so hard to keep those numbers in their spaces. Be warned: if you insert or omit one digit it is impossible to balance the sacred formula. No one goes to dinner until the equation is perfectly satisfied, Assets: 0, L+SE: 0. That is why accountants close the door when they are at work. Numbers do not forgive. This brings me to the last point about why the accountants I know work in isolation.

Financial accounting is fun. Accountants, I think, enjoy playing the numbers game! ...it is a numbers game!! lol. I enjoy naumbers games. Out of four complex accounts (I mean complex by my standards) that have been given to me to work out I have ably solved one! lol. It is amazing the titillation that goes with the accomplishment! It gives you the most exciting sense that you are on top of things here. It is like winning a chess game. Out of ten I played recently I lost four, which puts me at above average for level two against the computer.

In accounting you quickly learn to read instructions with greater care to understand what the words say and mean because they all carry economic power. The potential for error is always hovering around. When the accountant has decided the accounts to create out of an instruction, then he or she must assign correct debit and credit entries to T-accounts. From journal to ledger and through a series of calculations and assignments of debits and credits, the transaction is transformed into a language.

Accountants speak in tongues of their own. Understanding their basic language and the intricacies of their vocabulary opens a whole new world of real possibilities of enjoyment and intrigue. If you started out on this path, go for it, it gets better as you go along. ...Do not let anyone be deceived into believing that accountants shut the door for mere want of privacy. LoL!