Re: Accounting language to plain language - translation, please?

["Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>]

If the audience already understand the accounting concepts involved, then  
perhaps it makes perfect sense.

Otherwise, you would probably need to spell out definitions and examples  
for each of the concepts.

For example, I can guess at what a contra account or a loan loss reserve  
might be, but as I am not an accountant, I'll be thinking of them as  
Scrooge McDuck bins with money in them, while all the time they might  
instead merely be numbers in a list, and they won't fill up with gold,  
silver or green paper unless something really bad happens.

Each technical term has a specific meaning, and I would bet that a contra  
account and a contra-asset account might be two different things. (If not,  
why the different words?)

To accomplish your intended purpose I suspect that about ten paragraphs  
would be required, or perhaps an entire mini-course in accounting. I've  
noticed that people educated in the sciences do particularly poorly in  
accounting, usually because they think they know the material already.  
"It's obvious, and it's just adding and subtracting. Don't need to pay  
much attention. Wait a minute, why did you call that entry a credit when  
it's clearly a debit?"

On Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:21:59 -0400, <elizabeth -dot- sprague -at- maine -dot- rr -dot- com> wrote: