Accounting & Bookkeeping & Small Business Forum

[Guest]

The college I went to did not tell any big details to who does what and where and when as far as what you are titled as or should be titled as.
encarta.com gave me a more detailed description of what your title allows you to do.
Here is some information:
Accounting information can be classified into two categories: financial accounting, consisting of public information , and managerial accounting, consisting of privte information.
Financial Accounting includes information disseminated to parties that are not of the enterprise proper, such as stockholder, creditors, customers, suppliers, regulatory, commissions, financial analysts, and trade associations. Such information relates to financial position, the liquidity, and profitability of an enterprise.Done by Public Accountants, and Certified Public Accounts.
Managerial Accounting deals with information that is not generally disseminated outside a company such as salary costs, profit targets, and cost of materials per unit produced. Whereas the general-purpose statements of financial accounting are assume to meet the basic information needs of most external users, managerial accounting provides a wide variety of specialized reports for division managers, department heads, project diretors, section supervisors, and other managers within a company. If you are not a CPA or a PA, do not assume, or use the titles of public accoutants, do not use licensed acctant, or registered acctant, or enrolled acctant.
This information helped me alot.

[Guest]

Carolyn: I have to take esxception with the information that you give above. What a bookkeeper/accountant can call himself or herself, is determined by state law and can vary from state to state. You state that financial accounting can be done by cpa's .Although this is a true statement it is missleading in that you might not be required to be a cpa. Also, in my home state you can call yourself a registered saccountant or a CPA. Again, depending on your qualifications. If someone wants to know what they can do and what they can call themselves, they should check with their state accounting board not some website they found on the internet.

[Guest]

Ok. So every state has their own laws. I understand that. I was trying to explain what the difference is between a professional bookkeeper and a public accountant in most states. In my state you can not call yourself a registered accountant if you are not qualified for that destination because it is considered misleading making your clients or the government think that you are certified by the board of accountancy. Laws: can't live with them and you can't live without them.