Accounting is the part of business that records, measures, and communicates the state of the business in terms of financial data. The reporting is used by most other segment leaders to direct things in a productive and forward manner. It's one of the indicators that management can use to determine the state of the organization, and also how the organization answers to a number of outside interests, such as taxation, external stakeholder interests, and various compliance requirements.

In many ways accounting comes down to adding and subtracting, and in many book keeping systems, both. Terms used include credits (money added) and debits (money subtracted). Generally a complete accounting system will not only track values, but also provide a simplified way of accounting for assets in general. In larger organizations (such as corporations) this is not only a good idea, but also often legally required.

Accounts in the bookkeeping system are items (and potentially categories) that can have a specific value. In general, crediting one account will debit another account equally. The bottom line is everything ends 0. When there is a discrepancy, it will have another value which is often the result of erroneous information.

At tax time the recorded information is used to calculate the income (or loss), and then taxes are calculated based on this information.

Within a company, your dealings with the Accounts Department will vary. While in a smaller company you may even find yourself doing part of the bookkeeping; in larger companies you may only find yourself occasionally documenting an expense so the accountants can properly record it in the company's system.

Another area where you may find interaction relating to small and trivial office expenses is what's called Petty Cash. In some businesses this is the one area that causes controversy with the accounting department. They require an itemized receipt to ensure the expense is business related and documented in a way that provides an advantage at tax time. Usually a petty cash voucher needs to be filled in detailing type of expense and related department and attached to the receipt.

If you are still in college and introduction to accounting isn't in your curriculum, you may want to see if you can take it as an elective in your studies. Should you later start your own business, you will at least want to have some understanding of what the accountant does, and why.