Budget Accounting Elements

Accounting elements are also referred to as the basic elements of financial accounting or the elements of accounting objects.

As to the meaning of accounting elements, the accounting circle in our country is defined from the object of accounting or the content of accounting, that is, the accounting object. Generally speaking, accounting elements are the most basic components of accounting objects (accounting objects). They are not only the basic classification of economic activities of accounting, but also the basic elements of accounting statements.

It is biased to think that accounting elements are the elements of financial statements.

China's current budget accounting establishes five accounting elements, namely assets, liabilities, net assets, income and expenditure.

Among them, assets, liabilities and net assets are the three elements to build balance sheets, so they are also called balance sheet elements. The two elements of income and expenditure construct income expenditure tables, so they are also called income expenditure elements.

The following questions are discussed on the elements of budgetary accounting.

Assets and liabilities are the common accounting elements of the organization (a profit making organization, a non-profit organization, a financial, administrative and public institution), and net assets are unique in budgetary accounting. The three elements of the balance sheet are assets, liabilities and net assets.

The relationship between them is: Assets = Liabilities + net assets.

In budgetary accounting, assets, liabilities and net assets (Enterprise Accounting harmonics, surname, V, and so on) are unadorned. /P>,

Because the assets of an administrative institution have the characteristics of gratuitous and non operating or non-profit nature of the use (except the affiliated enterprises of institutions and the public institutions that have been incorporated into the accounting system of enterprises), especially the assets of the administrative units, especially the fixed assets, are usually provided by the government directly, without the need for the administrative units to use their business income to purchase them.

Second, budget accounting is characterized by limited qualitative and non restrictive assets.

The definition of assets refers to the provision of certain restrictions to the assets provided by the providers of assets, including the appropriator and the donor, and the appropriator and the donor usually add restrictions on the assets provided by laws, administrative orders or agreements, and the non-profit organizations that accept the assets must obey them.

From a time perspective, there are temporary limitations and permanent limitations.

Correspondingly, other assets can be classified as non restrictive assets.

The limitation of assets is a unique aspect of NPOs distinguished from profit organizations.

Third, the liabilities of non-profit organizations are mainly current liabilities.

For example, the liabilities of the general budget accounting are mainly manifested in the high credit national debt and the borrowed financial turnover fund formed by the accommodation of the financial circulating fund and the current liabilities such as the higher level dealings formed by the settlement of the system. Because the state stipulates that the administrative institutions can not raise the long-term funds by issuing bonds, and banks usually only provide short-term loans to them and basically provide long term loans, so the liabilities of the administrative institutions are mainly current liabilities.

Therefore, NPO does not basically have the problem of capital structure and leverage, but it is a profit oriented business organization.

Fourth, the difference between assets and liabilities in budgetary accounting adopts the title of "net assets", which is consistent with international common usage.

The relative concept in enterprise accounting is "owner's equity". It is the ownership of all kinds of investors' net assets of enterprises. At the same time, it is also a concept linked to the rights and interests of creditors. They constitute the concept of "equity" together.

Obviously, the difference in budgetary accounting does not have the explicit characteristics of owner's equity.

Therefore, it is necessary and appropriate to name "net assets" in budgetary accounting to distinguish "owners' rights and interests" in enterprise accounting.

Specifically, compared with the rights and interests of the owners, the net assets of NPO have the following basic characteristics: 1, non profit organizations do not have realistic owners, and their net assets do not reflect the owners' rights and interests of enterprises.

2, investors, such as appropriations and contributors, are nominally owned owners of NPOs. They do not require the sale, pfer or claim of the financial assets they provide, nor do they require financial benefits from the assets they provide.

3, in fact, non-profit organizations can not bring economic benefits to their wealth providers because they are not for profit.

4, in reality, some providers of non-profit organizations usually define certain restrictions on the use and maintenance of their financial assets, that is, some net assets of non-profit organizations are limited.

Like the restriction of assets, the definition of net assets can be divided into temporary restriction and permanent restriction.

The relationship between revenue and expenditure statement in budget accounting is two: income, expenditure and balance.

Among them, the income factor is significantly different from the income factor of the profit organization, and the expenditure element is unique. "Balance" is not an accounting factor.

Specific analysis is as follows: first, the income of NPOs has the following particularity: from the nature, the profit of NPO is to compensate for expenses rather than for profit; the price or charging standard of providing products or services is not entirely determined by the market economic value law, or even free or free of charge.

That is to say, non-profit organizations usually obtain lower or even no income on the products or services they provide, and the government appropriation is on the one hand for the development of non-profit organizations, and on the other hand is subsidized.

That is, some appropriation is a kind of remedy for low price and low fee service.

From the perspective of caliber, the income of NPOs is large caliber and completely different from the concept of small caliber income of profit organizations.

The income of non-profit organizations includes not only business income, but also investment interest, interest income, donation income and all kinds of government appropriations.

From a limited perspective, the income of NPOs is limited and non restrictive.

If the donation is accepted, if the donor has a prescribed usage requirement or time limit, then the donated income will be a limited income.

Second, the elements of NPO's expenditure need to be matched with income elements in design.

At the same time, expenditure has special characteristics in many respects compared with the cost of enterprise accounting.

From the perspective of function and purpose, the expenditure of non-profit organizations has the nature of redistribution of financial funds and appropriation of funds according to budget.

From the perspective of caliber, it is consistent with the large caliber of income, and the expenditure of NPOs is also large.

The expenditure of non-profit organizations includes not only the cost expenditure, but also the capital expenditure.

From the perspective of restriction, it is consistent with the distinction between limited income and non restrictive income. The expenditure of non-profit organizations can also be divided into limited expenditure and non restrictive expenditure, which is also the requirement of the financial providers.

From the point of view of confirmation, the affirming of NPO's expenditure is based on accrual basis, and some of them adopt the cash basis.

The accrual basis is the confirmation of expenses.

From the cost accounting, we can see that the products, services and items of the non-profit organizations need to calculate the cost separately, and they can be processed separately. This does not deny the connotation and denotation of the expenditure elements.

Third, balance is the difference between NPO's income and expenditure after a certain period of time.

Because NPOs are not for profit, their recognition of income and expenditure is obviously different from that of enterprises in terms of income and expenses.

The balance of non-profit organizations has obvious particularity compared with the profits of enterprises. The main performance is as follows: 1, the income and expenditure of non-profit organizations usually have differences. The difference is not shown as profit (or loss), but it is expressed as surplus (or negative balance).

But non-profit organizations do not pursue this balance, but objectively reflect it to provide useful accounting information.

2, in nature, the balance of non-performing organizations shows net assets changes, and their assets are net assets, and the profits of enterprises are shown as changes in owners' equity.

3, corporate profits are distributed and profits must be paid.

There is no distribution problem in the balance of non-profit organizations.

The balance of non-profit organizations is not required to fulfill the duty of paying taxes, and the negative balance is essentially a reduction of net assets.

4, the balance of non-profit organizations has no clear direction, and corporate profits are shown as credit balances.

5, the balance of NPOs is limited and non restrictive.

The restrictive balance is the balance between the limited income and the limited expenditure, and the non restrictive balance is the balance after the unrestricted income and the non restrictive expenditure.

Because of this, whether balance is an independent accounting element of a non-profit organization has different views.

In view of the balance of surplus as an independent accounting element, the company believes that, just as the three elements of the income, expenses and profits of the enterprise accounting constitute the basis of the enterprise income statement, the second factors of revenue, expenditure and balance constitute the second equation of budgetary accounting: income expenditure = balance, which can be used as the basis of the "income expenditure statement" to systematically reflect the income and expenditure of non-profit organizations and their results.

Moreover, users of accounting information who care about the income and expenditure of non-profit organizations and their results certainly hope to provide information about balances.

In view of the balance of surplus as an independent accounting element, the first thing is that the balance of assets is net assets, and its economic significance as an independent factor is not significant.

Secondly, for non-profit organizations, the implementation of the annual budget is important.

As an element, balance can not reflect the real result of balance of payments at any time, that is, there is no actual content.

Thirdly, the balance as a result of the budget implementation is very uncertain. It may or may not be possible. It may be the credit balance or the debit balance.

Even the direction of the balance can not be determined, as an element is not appropriate.

Of course, the final balance is not an independent element.

In fact, instead of taking the balance as an independent accounting element, it does not affect the accounting of budgetary receipts and payments and balances and the inspection and analysis of budget execution.

Three, concluding remarks, budget accounting, as one of the two branches of accounting, is the use of financial accounting in non-profit organizations such as government and public institutions.

But compared with enterprise financial accounting, budgetary accounting has many obvious particularity.

Starting from the most basic theoretical problems, it is very necessary to discuss the basic theory of accounting subjects, accounting elements, accounting basis and accounting reports in budgetary accounting.

This paper makes a preliminary discussion on the basic theoretical issues of budgetary accounting elements, and makes a comprehensive analysis and study of the particularity of the elements of budget accounting, so as to arouse the attention and importance of accounting theorists to the basic theory of budgetary accounting.

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