Accountancy and accounting is the provision of measurement or assurance about financial information. It is primarily used by managers, investors, lenders and tax authorities as well as other decision makers to allow them to make decisions on resource allocations between companies and organisations or within companies or organisations.

There are many different types of job that fall within the boundaries of Accountancy from Corporate Tax advisor to Chartered Accountant, as well as bookkeeping cost accounting. In order to get along in the world of Accountancy you will need to have a fairly mathematical mind set, and enjoy working with numbers and figures, if you don't like working with numbers, then a job in accountancy is probably not for you.

There are many professional bodies for accountants through the world and many allow their members to use titles that indicate their qualification level - these include Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA) Chartered Accountant (FCA, CA or ACA) , Certified General Accountant (CGA or FCGA) and many more. To become an accountant in the UK a person is generally expected to have studied Accounting and be certified by one of the various regulatory bodies that are part of the Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies (CCAB), although this isn't actually a requirement.

Working in Accountancy can be quite involved and there are often deadlines to meet at the end of each month to get figures produced. Like with most types of job, if you work for a small company, then the roll you play within the company may well be quite varied with book keeping, and accounts across the whole company. Working in a larger company however more people may be involved in the process with each one dedicated to a smaller section of the whole process.

There are many different aspects involved in general accountancy, from figure work to doing individual job costings and making sure that your company is making a profit to working on and planning the next years financial budget and sending in VAT returns. What you are doing specifically will vary quite a lot depending on the type of company you are working for, but it's well worth remembering that these days pretty much any company will have an element of accountancy involved as the aim of most businesses is to make money and that's all about budgets and balance sheets and profit and loss accounts, and paying staff members for their services. Add to this the fact that accurate archiving is necessary as records have to be kept for seven year for inland revenue purposes and you'll see that accounting jobs are quite important.