Accounting is . . .

• A structure for recording all the financial transactions in a business, organization or community.
• A method for reporting on the status of a group’s shared property at a given point in time.
• A method for reporting on the status of a group’s contracts (settlements and agreements) during a given period of time.
• A set of facts that, if accurate, reflect the facts of shared reality in any business, organization or community.
• A body of data from which key financial causes and effects can be extracted and presented to provide a meaningful picture of the economic health and direction of the whole system, whether a business, organization or community.
• A universal language on the planet, more common to human beings today than English.
• Access to the means to transform your reality and mine into a world that works for everyone.

Historically accounting is . . .

standard financial statements.

• A set of standard practices that have been driven by the needs of external parties to make sure those managing the key elements and creating the results were behaving in the interests of those external parties.
• A set of standard practices that, having been driven largely by the needs of external parties, have not provided the people actually managing the key elements and creating the results, with usable feedback about how well they are doing, individually and as a whole.
• An ineffective tool for understanding and managing cash/money in the bank, unless you are the bank doing it behind closed doors.
• A generator of measures that often create confusion for people, causing a vicious cycle of lowering trust levels, communication and cooperation.
• A body of data from which highly subjective and ‘blue sky’ projections of the future can be generated which everyone knows bear little or no resemblance to what will actually happen.
• A set of standard practices that have not dealt effectively with human realities within organizations, or external realities of the marketplace and the natural environment

It is now possible for accounting to be . . .

a daily business success tool.

• A shared discipline for an entire group of people who are committed to shared intent.
• A shared language that can allow people who are committed to shared intents to have a common universe of discourse/frame for conversation, thought and argument; no matter their educational, cultural, religious, or geographical backgrounds.
• A tool for managing and projecting cash flows and other results that one can take to the bank already having done the work that was historically done behind closed doors.
• A shared practice for overcoming one of the greatest challenges for human beings – to be accountable for our individual and collective impacts on and within the physical world.
• A co-evolving system for businesses, organizations and communities to create and refine measures of the financial, human and environmental results they are generating.
• A foundation for generating and evolving unanimity in any a business, organization or community.