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11.7 - Old School Accounting vs. New School Accounting -Similar to a movie that says the views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and creators and do not necessarily reflect traditional views on accounting. We acknowledge that this could be a very controversial topic and do not mean to make any sort of inference or offense. Having said that we are trying to stir the pot a little and challenge tradition.
OLD SCHOOL ACCOUNTING -Old school accounting, or traditional accounting, or double entry accounting, are some terms that are used to talk about classic ways of keeping books. Books meaning a company’s financials. Interestingly enough, originally things really were kept in books or notebooks. These are often referred to as journals and ledgers. -By way of a little history a couple of very important events happened. The father of accounting is a guy by the name of Luca Pacioli. He was an Italian monk that lived at the same period of time as Leonardo DaVinci. He is credited as the father of accounting due to a textbook he published called, "Summa de Arithmetica" (the summation of arithmetic). Here is the kicker, this book was published in 1494. To put this date in perspective, Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. Many of the modern day accounting systems have just digitized and sped up these 500+ year old concepts. This is potentially why we would call it old school accounting. -Going way back, before computers, company’s would keep track of their records on paper. The word “paper trail”goes back to this method of accounting. In order to keep things separated and organized they put things into accounts or T-accounts. A T-account was almost like a miniature bank balance which you could add to it or take away from it so that you could know the balance in that account. These pluses and minuses are called credits and debits. Normally a credit is a plus and a debit is a minus, there are some exceptions. -These processes may be different per company but this is a general overview. A company would have something that they wanted to track. Often this was something that was either important to the company or something the government said they had to track due to taxes. Where they would start is to create a list of categories that they called a chart of accounts. Each category or piece that they were going to track got a number. These numbers have all sorts of levels and specific categories that have been defined over time. There are certain numbers for cash, accounts receivable, accounts payable, long-term loans, etc. -A journal entry was a debit or credit to one of these chart of accounts. This is where your T-account comes in, meaning credits on one side of the T and debits on the other. These journal entries are the small transactions or day by day activity. The sum of these journal entries would then be passed on to a more stable spot called a ledger. Back in the day, depending on the time period between things, the journal entries would be kept daily or as often as they could. When the time period came that they wanted to get the totals, they then summed up those totals and put them into the ledgers. This helped them save space and kept the ledgers clean so that they weren’t showing all the daily ups and downs and fluidity of business. Often these final posts to the ledger were done weekly, monthly , quarterly, annually, or some other period of time. This is where the word post comes into accounting - moving from a general journal to a ledger - aka summing things up and stamping it into the more final record. -As part of the journal entry system businesses would do what is called double entry, meaning if something happened it may have effected more than one account. Technically this is how they were tracking cause and effects. For example if I got some new monies from a sale I would have to record those monies coming in and the other side of that would be that I got to deposit that money and my bank account increased. Some of these double entries can get very deep. -To help businesses keep track of their financials there have been some helpful documents or reports created that we still use today. These reports helped them to know the vitality of the business. These are things like cash flow statement, income statement (P&L or Profit & Loss), balance sheet, etc. These documents are wonderful tools that were created. Most business owners will recognize these names as standard financial documents. Business owners use these documents to get business loans, submit taxes, track business operations, buy and sell businesses, make business decisions, receive other financial reports/requests, etc. -There are a number of other things that are associated with old school accounting or traditional double entry accounting. There are chapters upon chapters and textbooks upon textbooks that go over all of the ins and outs of double entry accounting. In general, most of the existing accounting software packages literally emulate the same 500+ year old accounting concepts and flow. They use the same names, the same flow, same mentality, it is just digitized and has some technology enhancements that help it to go faster but it is based on the traditional accounting practices. We may address some of these traditional accounting aspects further as we discuss new school accounting.
NEW SCHOOL ACCOUTING -New school accounting, roll call accounting, time stamp accounting, tracking objects and data over time, data assembly line, world building, these are all some terms that could be used for modern and/or progressive ways of tracking your data and doing your books. As a note, some of the terms and concepts that exist in old school accounting will be mimicked or copied in new school accounting but some of the names have been changed. This is really important because if you keep some of the traditional names, people expect it to follow the same process as the traditional method does. -In old school accounting we added a history section that showed sort of where things came from. Before we jump into new school accounting we feel like it is important that you have an idea where some of these things came from before we start right into ideas and concepts. Right up front we didn’t set out to make a new accounting system. Our business problems were all on the operations, day to day tracking, side of the equation. If you would like a story type format here is a great document below that tells the unfolding of what happened with Adilas. https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_history_bio.pdf - (Tons of fun concepts as they developed. This document shows lots of the problems we encountered as a business and how our solutions evolved into the Adilas system.) -As humans we love to use tools because they help us accomplish our tasks more efficiently. In old school accounting some of the tools used at its roots go clear back to paper and pencil, which are some great tools. Each tool has pros and cons and at some point if the task keeps evolving it can break the efficiency of the tool being used. (If you are interested in seeing a fun document exploring tools and where they excel and break click here.) -All data actually has a life cycle, meaning it gets started or created and ends and/or finishes. Usually that means that there is some sort of time frame between these different phases or stages in how data fulfills it’s life-cycle. In our quest for tracking things we started on the operations side. We really wanted to see where every penny went from beginning to end. The missing pieces for our business were on the operations side of tracking inventories, selling inventories, counting inventories, building new things, etc., etc. Basically we needed to get more details on what was happening in the day to day transactions and activities. Step 1 is catch the data at the source. -As you try to catch data at, or from, the source you have to have tools in the hands of those who are doing it to allow them to capture the data. This can be a problem due to technologies, permissions, or trust issues between departments and employees. As part of this discussion we need to acknowledge that there is a known gap between operations and accounting. Operations, or sometimes the sales department, tries to make things happen to make the deals go. Sometimes accounting doesn’t like all of the decisions made by the operations department and/or doesn’t want to give all of the control for decisions to the operations department. This is where permissions come in. A permission is basically a thumbs up or a thumbs down on being able to add, edit, delete, modify, and so on to all kinds of elements. -At this point we want to introduce a few analogies. One of them deals with this life cycle of data. What we want to introduce is the idea of water becoming more solid or the process of water freezing into ice. At first when the water is very flexible this is like the sales - things are still happening and moving, deals might still be in process and negotiation, promises may be being made potentially on both sides of the equation. As the deals solidifies it is almost like that liquid water starts becoming snow or slush. At this point we now have fixed numbers, maybe we have monies, a transaction could have been completed, or we need to further build or fulfill something. As the time goes on those values, numbers, monies, product transactions, and data become more firm and stable like ice. They become fixed and a piece of the history. We call this analogy the water, snow, to ice analogy. -The next analogy we want to introduce is a cart and a horse analogy. We propose that the horse is the thing that is moving things along which is your operation or sales side of the equation. If you don't sell anything you don't have anything to account for. WORKING.... -The other analogy is the data assembly line
-WORKING, CONCPETS, IDEAS: -Comparison between operations and accounting with static, parallel, perfect lines - everything is perfectly static. -How we actually need flex bubbles and periods of time/waiting, etc. -Difference between operations and accounting and the gap between those. Batches, things get batched, missing time, lack of communication, non-centralized data, -Horse & cart analogy -3D data assembly line and 3D world building models 4:17 PM /// notes from the adilas history bio 4:17 PM - maybe grab the paragraph about no road maps and we were just going off of ideas, concepts, and needs... shannon liked that section.
-From here maybe start looking at the post-it note list and see if we can transition into some of those other pieces. We’d like to describe that there is gap, horse/cart, time, batching - and just how this gap keeps getting wider and wider with the real time effects of these things, using computers and technology to create logic that can perform these accounting operations (conversation with Brandon & Steve --- WORKING…. -IDEAS: We are going to start defining terms, concepts, start typing up pieces and ideas and we will probably need to come back and sew it all together, smooth things out, and make transitions. -Another Note: On 6/25/19 as Brandon and Steve were talking Steve was saying how old school accounting used to have post after post and entries and different journal entires - lots of time and inputs, whereas roll call accounting can use technology to create logic and teach the computer to look for certain patterns and use logic to map to what is actually happening. Because it uses the logic and mapping, it can do that process over and over again and allows the data to flow more on its own, it just tracks where everything is at and puts numbers where they need to go. Computers are really good at doing repetitive tasks. -Ideas/Concepts from History Bio Article: These concepts are enter once, use many, and empower the users at the point of action. The entire development process was as follows: 1. Find a specific need 2. Figure out what pieces came from where 3. Take a step in that direction by releasing a new tool, feature, or report. The natural consequence of the user actions would then present the next logical step and management would be able to see where they wanted to go. In a way, the horse began leading the cart instead of the other way around. -If you would like some additional research from the developer’s notebook on new school accounting look here. https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=new%20school -Some entries from the developer’s notebook on Christopher Columbus and Lucas Pacioli. Christopher Columbus - 1492 sailed the ocean blue. Luca Pacioli - the father of accounting - in 1494 published a work on the double-entry system of book-keeping and accounting called "Summa de Arithmetica". https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=columbus%2Bpacioli -This is a 6 page document that has a publish date of 2011 and deals with the start of the Adilas system. It discusses where Adilas came from and how we even started on this journey. Lots of fun concepts of roll call accounting and tracking objects and data over time. https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_history_bio.pdf -The link below is a photo gallery but has some interesting accounting concepts to check out especially in the second picture. https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_for_business/photo_gallery_full.cfm |