Across the nation:
 
Accounting seeks to give the image of the economic situation of the country by the aggregation of information from the accounting and other institutional information

• Public accounting determines income and spending of a country and other public authorities, and generally uses the technical principle of accounting for forecasting (budget), and the double entry accounts for performance.
• National accounts aggregates at the level of a country to use the public accounts and private accounts to give the image of the economic situation.

At the enterprise level

Accounting information helps managers of the entity, the owners of capital and other interested persons to make decisions of management. In most entities, especially in business, the keeping of accounts is a legal obligation for legal, social or fiscal reasons. The company accounts do not necessarily reflect their true state of health, given that the opportunity to make some creative accounting and complex off-balance.

• The general accounting or financial accounting is based primarily on the technique of double accounting. Mandatory information tool for companies beyond a certain size or a certain volume of business can be highly regulated and controlled by national legislation. Its main goal is to inform managers and third parties (owners, lenders, tax, etc...) on the economic situation of the entity. It is used to calculate the result and the direct or indirect taxes.
• The accounting, or management accounting, is seeking an accounting to determine the cost of goods and services a company sells. In the case of a company that buys products (e.g. wood planks) and sold them without having changed anything, the cost is easy to calculate: it is essentially the purchase price of the products. But if the company modifies (manufactures furniture, for example), the cost is much more complex: it includes wages, electricity costs, small tools, for "consumables" (glues, varnishes), etc... If the company produces one type of furniture, it is sufficient to divide all expenditures by the number of furniture for its cost. But if it produces several types of furniture, general accounting could not give the cost by type of furniture. It will find the information in its analysis accounting, which will also give other information management: cost of a cost center, margin by product, shop, etc... It is not compulsory but in practice necessary for large companies, and its production process is complex.

Reference: Wikipedia

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