UK and US accounting differences and similarities

[yuri_d]

Hi
I am a software implementer and need to improve my undestanding of accounting. I have found a lot of websites with helpful videos and articles but they are mainly of US origin. How applicable are the US principles to the UK trading/manufacturing businesses provided that language differences are undestood.
I read that UK and US both use anglosaxon accounting therefore should be quite the same?

Many thanks for any elucidation on that

[johndon68]

Whilst the principle of double entry is the same, the handing of VAT/Taxes is completely different, in my experience, it is difficult to anglicise a US product for the use in the UK, even Microsoft failed to make a good job of it...

John

[Galmac618]

I'm not an accountant and so don't know the nitty-gitty details (my usage is from an analysis of financial statements perspective) but from my experience there are differences (they even call things different names, e.g. Income Statement vs P&L). UK uses the IFRS standards whilst USA uses US GAAP. I think if you are trying to write software to integrate the two systems you'll be fighting an uphill battle. The day-to-day stuff should be the same and is based on the double entry principle, but I think they diverge with the more advanced things such as when revenues are recognised, capitalisation of expenses etc., which causes the end-of-year reporting to be different depending on which accounting system is used.

[John Barber]

Thank you for the information. I am learning about Accounting of Uk as well as US.