Account
A collection of financial information grouped according to customer or purpose.

Accounting
term that refers to the overall process of tracking your business's income and expenses, and then using these numbers in various calculations and formulas to answer specific questions about the financial and tax status of the business.

Audit
A systematic review or examination of the assertions or actions of a third party to evaluate conformance to some norm or benchmark.

Bookkeeping
The task of recording the amount, date, and source of all business revenues and expenses. Bookkeeping is essentially the starting point of the accounting process. Only with accurate bookkeeping numbers can meaningful accounting be

Accrual Method Of Accounting
In the context of a financial audit, audit findings represent weaknesses or deficiencies in internal controls, or instances of noncompliance with applicable laws and regulations, that are presented in an audit report.

Accounts Payable
Amounts that a business owes

Double-Entry Accounting
A system of accounting that records each business transaction twice.

Base Adjustment
Adjustments made to the initial base level budget to reflect total base level funding available to the agency. The list of acceptable base level technical and policy adjustments are included in the biennial budget instructions. Adjustments are generally made on a technical or policy basis. Examples of technical adjustments are one-time appropriations and program sunsets. Examples of policy adjustments are salary increases and space rental changes.

Adult Protective Services (APS
Adult Protective Services includes the 24-hour, 365 days a year access to assistance and/or referral with reports of physical, sexual or emotional abuse, neglect by caretaker, self-neglect, exploitation and abandonment.

Blue Book
This is the term commonly used to describe the Government Finance Officers Association publication Governmental Accounting, Auditing and Financial Reporting. Initially, the blue book was the authoritative source for GAAP for state and local governments.