Accounting

Watch

• Banking Explained – Money and Credit ↗Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
• The Big Four - Accounting firms under scrutiny | DW Documentary ↗DW Documentary
• How the rich get richer - Money in the world economy | DW Documentary ↗DW Documentary
• Money, Power and Wall Street, Part One (full documentary) | FRONTLINE ↗FRONTLINE PBS | Official
• The Untouchables (full documentary) | FRONTLINE ↗FRONTLINE PBS | Official
• Forensic accountant explains why fraud thrives on Wall Street ↗Big Think

Read

• Accounting Made Simple ↗Demystifies the fundamentals of financial accounting, offering a clear, concise primer for the uninitiated.Mike Piper
• Financial Accounting for MBAs ↗Provides a robust, practical grounding in financial reporting, essential for any manager seeking to interpret corporate performance.Peter D. Easton, Patricia M. Wild, Robert F. Halsey, Mary Lea McAnally
• Financial Shenanigans: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Frauds in Financial Reports ↗An indispensable guide to identifying the red flags and creative accounting practices that can obscure a company's true financial health.Howard Schilit, Jeremy Perler, Yoni Engelhart
• Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita (Particularis de computis et scripturis)The foundational text that codified double-entry bookkeeping, a system still central to modern financial reporting.Luca Pacioli
• The Role of Accounting Information in the Capital MarketsA seminal empirical study demonstrating the information content of earnings announcements and their impact on share prices.Ray Ball and Philip Brown

Voices to follow

• Lynn Turner ↗His incisive critiques of accounting practices and unwavering commitment to investor protection make him a crucial voice on financial integrity.Former Chief Accountant, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; Distinguished Fellow, Center for Corporate Governance, University of Denver
• Baruch Lev ↗A pioneer in valuing intangible assets and a persistent critic of traditional financial reporting's shortcomings in capturing modern economic realities.Philip Bardes Professor of Accounting and Finance, NYU Stern School of Business
• Robert S. Kaplan ↗His foundational work in management accounting transformed how companies measure performance and allocate costs, making him indispensable for understanding operational efficiency.Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus, Harvard Business School
• Stephen A. Zeff ↗His meticulous historical research illuminates the evolution of accounting standards and the profession's enduring influence on global commerce.Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Accounting, Emeritus, Rice University

Glossary

• AssetAn asset is anything valuable that a person or business owns. It's something that can bring future benefits or be turned into cash. For example, your phone, a bicycle, or money in your bank account are all your assets. For a shop, its building, cash register, and products for sale are assets.
• Balance SheetA Balance Sheet is like a snapshot of a business's financial health at a specific moment in time. It lists what the business owns (assets), what it owes (liabilities), and the owner's claim (equity). For example, imagine taking a photo of all your belongings, debts, and what you truly own right now – that's what a Balance Sheet does for a business.
• BudgetA budget is a detailed plan that estimates how much money you expect to earn (income) and how much you plan to spend (expenses) over a future period. It helps you manage your money wisely. For example, if you plan how much pocket money you'll get next month and how much you'll spend on snacks, games, and saving, you're creating a budget.
• EquityEquity is the value of what a person or business truly owns after all their debts (liabilities) have been paid off. It's the owner's share or claim on the assets. For example, if your phone is worth ₹10,000 but you still owe ₹2,000 on it, your equity in the phone is ₹8,000. For a business, it's the money invested by the owners plus any profits kept in the business.
• ExpenseAn expense is the money a business spends to operate and earn revenue. These are the costs of doing business. For example, if you bake cookies to sell, the cost of flour, sugar, and electricity are your expenses. For a shop, rent, salaries, and electricity bills are expenses.
• Income StatementAn Income Statement shows how much money a business made or lost over a period of time, like a month or a year. It lists all the revenue earned and all the expenses paid during that period. For example, if you want to know how much profit your lemonade stand made over the summer, you'd look at an Income Statement that lists all your sales and costs for that season.
• LiabilityA liability is something a person or business owes to someone else. It's a debt or an obligation that needs to be paid back in the future. For example, if you borrow money from a friend, that's a liability until you pay it back. For a business, a loan from a bank or money owed to suppliers are liabilities.
• ProfitProfit is the money left over when a business's total expenses are subtracted from its total revenue. If expenses are more than revenue, the business has a loss. For example, if you earn ₹500 from selling cards (revenue) and spent ₹100 on materials (expenses), your profit is ₹400.
• RevenueRevenue is the total amount of money a business earns from selling its products or services before any expenses are taken out. It's often called "sales." For example, if you sell handmade cards for ₹50 each and sell 10 cards, your revenue is ₹500. A bakery's revenue comes from selling bread and cakes.
• TransactionA transaction is any event that has a financial impact on a business and can be measured in money. It's a financial exchange. For example, buying a new textbook, selling an old video game, or paying for a bus ticket are all transactions. For a business, buying supplies or paying salaries are transactions.

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Where this connects to other fields, and why it's worth knowing.

• Slavery, Race & Rights History

  Some of the math behind modern insurance and business bookkeeping was perfected on slave ships. Enslaved people were listed as insured cargo, and their deaths were recorded as a financial loss, a number in a ledger. The cold tools of finance were sharpened on one of history's cruelest trades.

• Memory and Its Failures Psychology

  A company's financial statements are its memory of what happened, and like your memory they're rebuilt each time, not played back like a recording. That's why they can be honestly fuzzy, and also why they're so easy to quietly fudge. Both a brain and a balance sheet reconstruct the past, and reconstruction leaves room to lie.

• Matter, Energy & Forces Science

  In physics, energy never just vanishes or appears from nowhere. Accounting works the exact same way with money: every amount that leaves one place has to show up somewhere else, no exceptions. Balancing the books is really just conservation of energy wearing a business suit.

• Ancient Civilizations History

  Writing wasn't invented for stories or poems. The oldest clay tablets are just records of grain and who owed what. So humanity's first written documents were basically accounting sheets.