Successful Accounting Starts With Having Honesty

One of the first books to deal with modern accounting was first published in Venice in 1494. It was written by Luca Pacioli. It was called Review of Arithmetic, Geometry, Ratio and Proportion. In it there was a lengthy discourse on bookkeeping. This section was called Details of Accounting and Recording. Merchants were the ones who really used such a book. It's interesting that it is the first known record of a lengthy discourse on the subject.
New modern accounting started from this discourse. In this book, this is the first time that the plus and minus symbols were used in any book having to do with accounting. This became the standard in the Italian Renaissance mathematics. Another first in this book was the use of algebra. The system of the double entry was also first used in this book. This is just a little bit of interesting history on accounting, for which we owe some debt to Pacioli for laying the basis for modern accounting.
We all know about the scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, Quest, Sunbeam and the list goes on. It shows how management moved the figures around to make it look like things were far better profit wise. So it's much better to be honest in all forms of accounting. This includes financial accounting, business accounting or just providing accounting info. The accounting standards are high when you have to do it the right way. It's really the best way.
One of the things that was done after the Enron scandal was the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. It made for higher criminal penalties for securities fraud. This also goes for changing or making up records when these are under investigation. This goes for trying to cheat the shareholders out of their money. In all these cases and many more we see the highly important point of honesty in accounting. Not only is this good for business, it will help you be successful! For more articles on great strategies in accounting see http://www.accounting-jcreate.com