I learned accounting as a CS student and did it for a few years for volunteer organizations that were too small to consider professional services. The order I l

I learned accounting as a CS student and did it for a few years for volunteer organizations that were too small to consider professional services. The order I learned things was probably very different from how accounting is taught in schools, but it was appropriate for someone with my background. From my point of view: Elementary accounting is just a simple formal system. If you are used to formal reasoning, you can learn it in a few hours. Basic accounting is all about the way of thinking. You learn the data model implied by the system and the key concepts behind it. You learn about things you are supposed to model within the system and how to accomplish that. And you learn about reporting, because nobody wants to see your low-level data. They want various views to the data based on richer data models. The accounts used in reporting are rarely the same as the ones used in accounting. Intermediate accounting is about applying those basic principles in a specific regulatory environment. A lot of confusion about accounting arises when people try to jump directly from the elementary model to the specific requirements without first understanding what they are trying to accomplish and why.