Preface
Amanda White; Mitchell Franklin; Patty Graybeal; and Dixon Cooper
Welcome to Accounting and Accountability – an open textbook provided through the University of Technology Sydney. This textbook was created using material from a range of open sources including Principles of Accounting Volume 1 and Principles of Accounting Volume 2 – both edited by Franklin, Greybeal and Cooper and distributed through OpenStax – under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA) license.
About Accounting and Accountability
This textbook was designed to support Accounting students at UTS in the subject 22108 Accounting and Accountability. Why make a textbook and distribute it free to students and the general public? It all comes back to who UTS is as an institution:
“UTS is a public university of technology defined by our support for the economic, social and cultural prosperity of our communities.” (UTS website, accessed 13 January 2022)
And in addition:
“As public purpose institutions, universities have a critical responsibility to contribute to the community through research, education and practice. At UTS, the concept of social justice is key to our core and purpose – we are committed to driving social change in the world beyond our campus.” (UTS Social Impact Framework, accessed 13 January 2022)
One way that we can support the success of our student community is to reduce the barriers to attending university by providing this free text.
Acknowledgement of country
We gratefully acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation – the traditional custodians of the land on which the University of Technology of Sydney stands. The Gadigal people have cared for their community, land and waters for thousands of generations, based on their deep knowledge of their country. We pay our respects to their Ancestors, their Elders and acknowledge their ongoing status as the First Peoples of this land – land that was never ceded.
I (Amanda) would also like to gratefully acknowledge the Dharug people, on whose lands this book was edited and parts written by me.
Coverage and scope
This textbook covers the basics of accounting without getting into the gritty details of debits and credits. It is therefore suitable for anyone wishing to understand the fundamentals of accounting without becoming an accountant. A chapter outline is as follows:
Chapter 1: Accounting and Accountability
Chapter 2: Processing Economic Events
Chapter 3: Refining the Recording Process
Chapter 4: Internal Control Systems and Reducing Fraud
Chapter 5: Financial Reporting for External Users
Chapter 6: Analysing Financial Reports
Chapter 7: Accountability and Management Decision Making
Chapter 8: Planning For the Future Using Budgets
Chapter 9: Decision Making in the Short Term: Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis
Chapter 10: Longer Term Decision Making Using Relevant Costs
Chapter 11: Evaluating Performance Using Variance Analysis
Chapter 12: Accounting, Accountability and Social Responsibility
About the authors
This open textbook has many contributors and you can find the attributions to the various open resources used throughout the text.
The primary author and editor for Accounting and Accountability is Dr Amanda White. Amanda is a highly regarded academic having taught for over two decades in the Australian higher education system. Combining her previous practical experience as an auditor and consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, a love of educational technology and social media – Amanda received the national Teaching Excellence Award for Law, Business, Economics and related disciplines in 2020 through the Australian Awards for University Teaching (press release). This ranks Amanda as one of the premiere Business/Commerce academics in the country. She is frequently invited to provide keynote presentations at both domestic and international conferences and symposiums. Amanda contributes to the profession of accounting as a member of the Education Board of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, guiding the professional certification of accountants.
You can find out more about Amanda on her university profile, personal website and social media pages (Facebook, Instagram).
Accessing this book from a country with internet restrictions?
UTS has students enrolled in its programs from all around the globe. Videos provided in this book are hosted on YouTube. For those who are unable to access YouTube due to government internet restrictions in their country (such as China) – please contact Amanda for an alternative link to the videos.
Customisation
Accounting and Accountability is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA) license, which means that you can distribute, remix, and build upon the content, as long as you provide attribution to all of the publishers and content contributors, do not use the content for commercial purposes, and distribute the content under the same CC BY-NC-SA license.
Art attribution
In Accounting and Accountability, most art contains attribution to its title, creator or rights holder, host platform, and license within the caption. Because the art is openly licensed, anyone may reuse the art as long as they provide the same attribution to its original source.
Errata
Accounting and Accountability is currently in its draft format. The authors welcome any comments on this draft. The book will undergo peer review in 2022 before being officially published and registered with an ISBN.
Format
You can access this textbook for free in web view on Pressbooks or as a PDF download. You can also select a PDF option that you can take to a printing company to create a professionally bound book.
