Latest Hospitality Accounting Interview Preparation Guide

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Accounting is a method or system used to keep track of and determine the financial status of a person or company's income/assets and outlay of money/possessions. (An Accountant engages in Accounting: "The occupation of maintaining and auditing records and preparing financial reports for a business"

Following are different branches of accounting:
1) Cost Accounting
2) Financial Accounting
3) Management Accounting

1) Recording
2) Classifying
3) Summarizing
4) Interpreting

Accounting is the method in which financial information is gathered, processed, and summarized into financial statements and reports.
The purpose of accounting is to provide information used in decision-making. Accounting may be viewed as a system (a process) that converts data into useful information.

Information processes include:
★ Recording
★ Maintaining
★ Reporting

Every business has numerous processes. Some are simple, others complex and cumbersome. However, as the business grows, acquires new customers, enters new markets, and keeps pace with constant changes in statutory regulations... the company will need to maintain highly accurate and up-to-date accounting, inventory, and statutory records.

This is where a computerized accounting helps simplify, integrate, and streamline all the business processes, cost-effectively and easily.

Normative Theory is a theory that prescribes how a process of accounting should be done. This theory is not based on observation and may suggest radical changes to current practices in accounting.

It is removing items from the income statement or balance sheet that do not normally occur during the course of business to better estimate the value of a company.

'Dr' means Debere in Latin stands for 'what comes in' or in simple words whatever assets the business owns or the expenses it has to pay comes under debit.

While 'cr' means credere in Latin means 'what goes out', in simple words whatever liabilities business owns, or the income it earned during the year comes under credit.

An accounting transaction is the exchange of request/response messages to perform accounting. Accounting can be performed in the form of accounting transactions that report on resource usage by a session. Accounting transaction can occur during a session if accounting or charging indications are needed [p&l based acct] or only at the start and the end of the session.

Accounting ethics is primarily a field of applied ethics, the study of moral values and judgments as they apply to accountancy. It is an example of professional ethics.

Proper accounting for property that is entrusted to the fiduciary acting under the conditions set forth in a deed.

The Accounting Principles are the assertion rules of accounting and the application of these rules, method, & procedures to actual practice of accounting. These Accounting principles have been divided into:
A) accounting concepts
B) accounting conventions

Fair Value accounting is an accounting term that requires a company to place a value on all of the assets on its balance sheet that, it is the price at which the assets could be sold. This is easy to do when the asset has a quoted market price. However, it is often the case that there is no liquid market for an asset, and thus the company has to make an estimate of fair value. When the marketplace is in turmoil and illiquid, as it has been for much of 2008, companies are sometimes forced to place a very low value on an asset, resulting in a substantial markdown from the prior value. See related links for complete explanations.

Yes, the accounting calculates the cost of capital to the business. It compares the current, expected, and historic rates of return. Suppose a company is making 12% returns but borrowing money by using the owner's credit card at 22% be good to know that.

For simplistic purposes, there is not much, if any, difference between "cost accounting" and "management accounting". These terms refer to the accounting techniques used internally by a company's management to determine the costs of running the business and help in decision making. For example, reports that compare budgeted to actual expenses are commonly used to monitor the successful management of a specific department or store within a larger enterprise.

Financial Accounting refers to accounting practices that result in financial statements used by various stakeholders of the business. Stakeholders may include management and employees, as well as vendors, suppliers, customers, bankers and regulators. The accounting practices used in compiling financial statements are referred to as "GAAP" or the generally accepted accounting principles as set forth by the Financial Accounting Standards Board in the U.S. In the U.S., external financial reports issued by public and/or regulated companies must comply with GAAP.

Some accounting methods used in cost accounting are not recognized by GAAP and therefore can only be used internally.

The elegance of Accounting is that it is a purveyor of information, organized into systems, and exploited for a particular purpose. That is because Accounting is vague. Interestingly, information from accounting can be split into to methods: 1. Valuation 2. Evaluation

1. Valuation - This is the type of information that financial/Tax/Cost accounting attempts to tackle. What is that worth? How much of it came from this source of value? What will be the asset be worth in ten years? All of these questions are valuation methods and accounting provides an informational standpoint from which to analyze these questions and ascertain an answer to them.

2. Evaluation - This would be your classical managerial accounting. Did employee A provide hire effort? What should compensation look like? How are we performing? All are evaluation questions. Evaluation is especially important to Internal Audit and the control environment. You can easily image a professor conducting evaluation accounting to assign proper reward to students who exhibit learning through testing.

A account is the method used to visualize the debit credit accounting procedure. The account can represent any account regardless of expense, revenue, asset, or liability. The debits are placed the left side and the credits on the right.

Taxpayers like to use accounting.

EA stands for Enrolled Agent. It is a certification by the Internal Revenue Service given to those qualified to practice before them. To become an EA, one must pass a test given by the IRS, the purpose of which is to try to ensure that only qualified people practice before the IRS. You may not be a Power of Attorney for the IRS unless you are an EA or some other certified individual such as a CPA or an attorney.

External users of accounting information (especially investors) use accounting information like annual and quarterly reports to base their investing decisions on, and to compare different companies with one another.
Internal users of accounting (mostly managers) use internal accounting information in order to plan.

Real accounts, i.e. Balance Sheet accounts are ongoing perpetual records and represent "real" items; cash, receivables, inventories, accounts payable, invested capital, etc., etc. Accounts receivable and goodwill therefore are both real accounts as they have value in and of themselves.

Nominal accounts represent items of income and expense. Nominal accounts have no balances at the beginning of an accounting period and change as various debits and credits are applied because of activity of income and expense throughout the accounting period. At the end of the accounting cycle, the nominal accounts are returned to zero by debiting them by an amount equal to their credit balance if such exists, or crediting an account if it has a debit balance.

The offsetting entry of each of these is to a Profit or Loss Account. If after all accounts are zero, the P&L account has a debit balance then operations were profitable (income exceeded expenses), and conversely with a credit balance a loss was incurred. The P&L is then "closed" by either debited or crediting to bring it to zero, whichever is appropriate, with the offsetting entry going to "Retained Earnings", a real account, and bringing the Balance Sheet into balance and leaving all nominal accounts at zero.

This depends on the nature of the account and the thing you wish to achieve. For example, to increase cash you would debit the cash account, but if you wanted to decrease it, you would credit it. There are all sorts of accounts and they have different normal balances.

The thing to remember is that every journal entry must have equal debits and credits. So for example to increase a contra asset account like Allowance for Doubtful debts you would credit Bad Debt Expense to increase it and credit Allowance to increase that!

Yes, in some cases. For example:
The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (the "FFIEC") approved a reporting requirement, effective October 1, 1989, to use push down accounting in certain acquisitions of national banks, state member banks and insured state nonmember banks. This reporting requirement is an addition to the Glossary to the Instructions to the Consolidated Reports of Condition and Income ("Call Report").

Fiscal year.

Bonds have discounts and premiums and accrued interest. Preferred Stock does not.

The Cash Basis of accounting reports only transactions that have been completed in the current reporting period - or - what has "hit" the checking account (assuming all funds are deposited and disbursed only from that account) - The Accrual Basis of accounting reports all transactions that the entity has entered into and includes the asset, liability, income and expense related them.

In addition, the Cash Basis of accounting is considered OCBOA (Other Comprehensive Basis of Accounting ~ Other than GAAP) and the Accrual Basis (when implemented properly and fully) is considered GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).

EDIT - The Accrual Basis is more desirable from a user's standpoint as it includes transactions that may exist were completed after the report dates that were initiated prior to the report date. It is generally more complete and more reliable than the cash basis - however, that does assume that the person preparing the statements has expertise of, not simply a cursory working knowledge of, GAAP and the accrual basis. For example, a set of financial statements printed out of QuickBooks are not necessarily GAAP compliant (or correct) although they may appear to be at first glance or to a layperson.