UK and US accounting differences and similarities

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yuri_d

  • #1
    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
     
    G

    Galmac618

    Free Member
    Aug 9, 2011
    22
    0
  • #3
    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.
     
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