Question

‘The accounting concepts and accounting standards are generally referred to as the essence of financial accounting’. Comment

Answer 1

Financial accounting is concerned with the preparation of the financial statements and provides financial information to various accounting users.

It is performed according to the basic accounting concepts like Business Entity, Money Measurement, Consistency, Conservatism, etc.

These concepts allow various alternatives to treat the same transaction.

For example, there are a number of methods available for calculating stock and depreciation, which can be followed by various firms.

This leads to wrong interpretation of financial results by external users due to the problem of inconsistency and incomparability of financial results among different business entities.

In order to mitigate inconsistency and incomparability and to bring uniformity in preparation of the financial statements, accounting standards are being issued in India by the Institute of Chartered Accountant of India.

Accounting standards help in removing ambiguities and inconsistencies.

Hence, accounting standards and accounting concepts are referred as the essence of financial accounting.