Classification of Accounting Accounts

The activity of any accountant, no matter what firm or organization he works in, is necessarily linked to accounts. All operations in accounting are formalized with their help. To simply explain to a person who an accountant is, they often say that this is an accountant. And now let's look at this word carefully: the bookkeeper is the one who manages accounts. Hence it follows that the essence of the accountant's work is to serve one or another account. Accounts in accounting are also many, like activities in the economy. Do not get lost in this vast array of helps classification of accounts .

What is its help? Accounts are divided into groups to create a system by which an accountant would be easier to work with. However, this work is quite capacious, complex and ambiguous. So, if we consider accounting as a science, we have to classify accounts using scientific methods. If you have ever studied accounting, you probably know that there are balance sheet, inventory, financial, budget, economic, property, production, synthetic, analytical and other groups of accounts. However, such classification of accounting accounts is rarely used in life.

A practicing accountant usually prefers to use a list of accounts developed by the state in his activity. Classification of accounts of accounting By this type divides the accounts according to the field of activity that they serve. As an example, you can bring familiar to all phrases, which are also the names of accounts: "Cashier", "Profit", "Financial result".

And yet the most well-known system of accounts (the classic of accounting) divides them into three groups. Each group combines the accounts, which are filled in according to the unified rules for deducing the total amount. If the total debit is active accounts, if the credit account is passive, if the floating account is active-passive. This division is connected with the balance sheet - the main document that every accountant must reduce each year. Asset and Passive - two columns of this document (hence the name of the accounts). The asset takes into account the property, and the Passive - the sources of this property. With active accounts it is not difficult to work, but passive accounting accounts sometimes cause some difficulties. To avoid them, it is important to remember that all transactions with a passive account are processed in a mirror image compared to the active one. So, if the increase in the active account is displayed in the debit, then on the passive account - in the loan. Therefore, the balance (total amount) for a passive account should always be on the right side of the account (loan).

It is even easier to get confused by filling active-passive accounting accounts. These are especially dynamic accounts, since their balance can be not only in the passive or in the asset. It can change periodically or be in a passive and an asset at the same time.

Classification of accounting accounts by the balance type is described in detail in the example. Suppose you decide to buy a new refrigerator. How is it recorded in the accounts? (The names of accounts will be taken from life.) Your cash that you pay to the seller is the expense on the active account "Wallet" and at the same time the arrival on the passive account of "Household equipment". You have spent money, you have less of them, but your property has increased. However, if you took a loan to buy a refrigerator, then your active-passive "Credit" account will have a debt of the amount you paid in the store. And if you lent to a neighbor of money last month to buy a phone and you have not returned them to you, then at the moment your active-passive account of Kreditka has a balance both in debit (you owe the bank) and in a loan ( You need a neighbor). If after buying a refrigerator you could live by the end of the month for the remaining salary and at the same time postponed, at the end of the month your active-passive Savings account will have a credit balance (profit), and if you did not have enough money and had to get hold of the deferred Means and spend them on food, then the same Savings account at the end of the month will have a debit balance (loss). This situation may change next month.