What’s So Difficult About Setting Financial Accounting Standards?
Accounting standards change so slowly, they often seem relics from another era.
—Dean Foust
Accounting standards (essentially GAAP), which explain how transactions and other events are calculated, recorded, and reported, can be difficult to establish, frustrating to make sense of, and likely subject to change on future standard-setting agendas.1 Major reasons are summarized in Table S-C.1. Simple bookkeeping (single entry) works okay for basic operations, especially when determining periodic income is not important. Double entry become useful for more complicated operations, especially when periodic income calculations are essential—critical for most commercial organizations ...
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