ColorAccounting.com - Accounting Literacy & Business Acumen
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Sales Partners
    • In the media
    • Newsletter
    • Blog
    • Links
    • Vision
  • Solutions
    • Workshops
    • Remote Workshop
    • Books
    • Other Formats
    • FAQ
  • Clients
    • Clients
    • Testimonials
  • Schools
  • Contact us
  • In the media

How Accountants Sort Things Out

6/28/2018

0 Comments

 
How accountants sort things can have serious consequences. And provide some fun.

In our business acumen workshops, managers talk about how they organize their kitchen or their clothes. There’s a lot of laughter as the obsessive-compulsives in the room get outed for their color-matching proclivities. 

Picture
Photo by Hannah Morgan on Unsplash

Applied to accounting, we ask questions like: should we classify the cost of a trip to meet with a client as Marketing or, perhaps, Travel? And if Travel, should we break out airfares from ground travel?

The important lesson is that we can obscure financial information by how we aggregate, slice and describe it.  

For example, when a mining company’s sales are reported on its income statement by type of mineral rather than by mining region, it can disguise how much of the company's activities happen in dodgy places.  
  
Back in the classroom, our recent favorite classification was a student who said she organized the novels on her bookshelf by how the authors would get along. Who needs alphabetic when you have that kind of insight?

Peter

Picture
Photo by Dmitri Popov on Unsplash

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Blog
    ​

    RSS Feed

    Or simply subscribe here to get it by email.

    Author

    Co-founder Peter Frampton is the lead author of this blog.

    Picture
    View my profile on LinkedIn
    If you are interested in a #financiallyconsciousworld, join the conversation at Color Accounting Friends on LinkedIn.

    Archives

    March 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014


    RSS Feed

    Get notified:
    Use the RSS feed above or 
    Get the e-newsletter here...

    Categories

    All
    Accounting Literacy
    Account Management
    Assets
    Business Acumen
    Color Accounting
    Colour Accounting
    Costs
    Financial Literacy
    Investment
    Joint Value
    KAM
    Key Account Management
    Learning Style
    Luca Pacioli
    Organisations
    Resources
    Revenue
    SAM
    Silos
    Strategic Account Management
    Strategic Relationships
    Transactional


Finance and business acumen workshops for non-financial people using a breakthrough graphical system
© All rights reserved. Color Accounting International (1992-2019)
'Accounting Comes Alive', 'AccountingSchool.org', 'Color Accounting', 'Colour Accounting', the zebra icon AccountingSchool.com and 'BaSIS Framework' are trademarks of Color Accounting International.
Contact Us |  Corporate  |  Legals  |  Partner Orders  |  Register Event Held  |  Educators' Resource Center
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Sales Partners
    • In the media
    • Newsletter
    • Blog
    • Links
    • Vision
  • Solutions
    • Workshops
    • Remote Workshop
    • Books
    • Other Formats
    • FAQ
  • Clients
    • Clients
    • Testimonials
  • Schools
  • Contact us
  • In the media