Accounting Principles & Standards: Avoid Them At Your Peril
Accounting principles are the basic assumptions, rules of operation, and essential characteristics that make up the framework for the construction of accounting financial statements.
Long ago, I was perplexed to discover that there was no set of accounting principles that was presented in one form such as you might find in the Bill of Rights. This is not to say that the principles are incomplete or vague, it only means that the definitions of accounting principles can be presented in various formats, which may lead to confusion for some people, especially beginners.
Be that as it may, accounting principles are absolutely necessary when preparing financial statements, just as the rules of a particular card game make the card game possible in the first place. Accounting principles are like the glue that holds the accounting process together. For example, financial statements have an overall objective, which is to provide the user of the statements a useful tool for making business decisions.
In order to be useful, the accounting information must have certain characteristics, such as...