Welcome to Accounting, Business and Society – 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, Business and Society

This textbook was designed to support Accounting students at UTS in the subject 22208 Accounting, Business and Society. 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 1 July 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 1 July 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.

We (Amanda and Rina) would also like to gratefully acknowledge the Dharug people, on whose lands this book was edited and parts written by us.

Coverage and scope

This textbook covers the basics of accounting from an information and decision making perspective. Students who understand business information, and know how to use and interpret it, make better business decisions and thus will be suitable for all business students – not just those intending on doing an accounting major. While you may dread doing an accounting core subject as part of your degree, the knowledge of basic accounting will help you better manage your personal finances and some general knowledge of accounting will also enable you to make better financial and investment decisions as a future business manager and leader.

A chapter outline for this textbook is as follows:

Chapter 1: Accounting in business and society

Chapter 2: Recording accounting information

Chapter 3: Recording economic events

Chapter 4: Recording adjusting entries and the trial balance

Chapter 5: Accounting for different business structures

Chapter 6: Receivables

Chapter 7: Inventory

Chapter 8: Property, plant and equipment

Chapter 9: Cash flow statements

Chapter 10: Law and ethics

Chapter 11: Performance measurement and evaluation

Chapter 12: Sustainability, accounting and decision making

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, Business and Society is Dr Rina Dhillon. Rina is a qualified chartered accountant and has 10 years of teaching and research experience at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), University of New South Wales (UNSW) and University of Sydney (USyd). She holds a PhD in Accounting from the University of New South Wales, with research publications in international accounting journals. Rina also has 8 years of accounting and auditing experience, including business development and management accounting experience in a Singaporean SME, Big 4 audit experience in Deloitte Sydney and Ernst & Young Singapore.

You can find out more about Rina on her university profile.

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 email 22208@uts.edu.au for an alternative link to the videos.

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