The World without Bankruptcy Laws
Bankruptcy is one of the natural states which a company may find itself in. Entrepreneurship is primarily about taking risks. When companies take risks, some of them succeed, whereas others fail. Hence failure is a natural part of the business. However, many critics of bankruptcy laws believe that there isn’t a need for an elaborate […]
The Wirecard and Infosys Scandals are a Lesson on How NOT to Treat Whistleblowers
What is the Wirecard Scandal all about and Why it is a Wakeup Call for Whistleblowers Anyone who has been following financial and business news over the last couple of years would have heard about Wirecard, the embattled German payments firm that had to file for bankruptcy after serious and humungous frauds were uncovered leading […]
Why the Digital Age Demands Decision Makers to be Like Elite Marines and Zen Monks
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Why Indian Firms Must Strive for Strategic Autonomy in Their Geoeconomic Strategies
Geopolitics, Economics, and Geoeconomics In the evolving global trading and economic system, firms and corporates are impacted as much by the economic policies of nations as they are by the geopolitical and foreign policies. In other words, any global firm wishing to do business in the international sphere has to be cognizant of both the […]
Why Government Should Not Invest Public Money in Sports Stadiums Used by Professional Franchises
In the previous article, we have already come across some of the reasons why the government should not encourage funding of stadiums that are to be used by private franchises. We have already seen that the entire mechanism of government funding ends up being a regressive tax on the citizens of a particular city who […]
Although accounting may be heralded as being the language of the business, it is definitely not error-free. This has been highlighted by the fact that accounting scams have occurred one after the other for many years. In fact, even after stricter regulation and tightening of accounting rules, accounting scams just don’t cease to stop.
As a student and practitioner of accounting, it is therefore imperative to know the limitations of accounting. Knowledge of limitations helps to factor them in and work with them. Here are the major limitations of accounting.
Accountants have to attach a monetary value to every event or transaction that has taken place within the organization. Sometimes the monetary value of the transaction is impossible to be ascertained. Consider the case of depreciation. Accountants can at best provide estimates of the depreciation that should have taken place given the scale of operations. However, these estimates are usually way off the mark. This makes accounting policies open to debate as well as manipulation.
Accountants try to attach a monetary value to everything. The things they cannot attach a monetary value to are not accounted for! Consider the case of Goodwill. Until the organization has explicitly paid for the Goodwill it purchased from another company, it cannot account for Goodwill. According to accountants, the Goodwill generated by the firm internally is worthless. We all know that this is not the case and therefore accounting is flawed as far as Goodwill is concerned.
Accountants have to measure all transactions in a single unit of account. This unit of account is usually the currency that is being used in a particular country. However, it is common knowledge that the value of currencies is not stable.
Inflation, deflation and such other forces make currency values dynamic. When accountants express assets purchased in last year’s rupees with the same unit as purchased by this year’s rupees, it presents a distorted image. Many companies have low book values because their assets were purchased a long time back during periods of no inflation.
Accountants provide information about what has happened. However, management would be better off if they had information about what could have happened if they used their resources in the optimum manner. This feature is also lacking in accountancy making its usefulness limited from the managerial point of view.
Despite its limitations, the importance of accounting is unquestionable. It is difficult to imagine running a firm without accounting.
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