What is the difference between bookkeeping and accounting?

Question

What is the difference between bookkeeping and accounting?

Answer 1

Bookkeeping is placing the correct transaction amounts in the correct places.  Accounting involves putting together financial statements and communicating the financial information to other people, inside or outside the company.  Bookkeeping provides and organizes all the financial information about a company, and accounting analyzes it and presents it.

Answer 2

Bookkeeping is part of accounting, defined as "the record keeping aspect of accounting that is applied in the preparation of financial statements for taxation and other data that companies and individuals use to keep track of business and personal expenses and obligations."  Accounting is more comprehensive and harder to master.  It is "the process of keeping tract of of economic expenditures and information, whether in business, politics, or personal finances. Classifications of accounting fall in managerial and financial categories that are used in budgeting, pricing, profit and loss calculations, planning, productivity, and other financial activities and information associated with capital, investments, and similar matters."  One of my accounting professors described it as the "language of business."