Limitations Affecting Accounting

Abstract

Accounting is a necessary but incomplete technology for providing all the decision-useful information needed by management and investors. Accounting is inseparably tied to enterprise transactions and its history. Expected future experience may be entertained but cannot be convincingly reported as established fact. Reported expectations in the midst of actual experience could be more confusing than enlightening. Instead, non-accounting technology can effectively supplement transaction enterprise data with projected expectations and interpretative data. Furthermore, accounting does not possess the qualities necessary for a science; yet accounting, as science, has an interpretative obligation to hold fast to specific realities.

Citation

(2016), "Limitations Affecting Accounting", A. C. Littleton’s Final Thoughts on Accounting: A Collection of Unpublished Essays (Studies in the Development of Accounting Thought, Vol. 20), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 99-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-350420160000020033