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People who perform this task are called accountants. This term is very broad in that it will include a part time bookkeeping clerk or the Chief Financial Officer of a large public company. Accountants may obtain a professional designation, Certified Public Accountant, or CPA, which confers certain rights and obligations.
Accounting employes employs what is called "double entry bookkeeping", in which every transaction is entered as both a debit and credit. Double entry bookkeeping accurately accounts for the relationship expressed in the basic accounting equation; Assets = Liabilities + Equity. This basic equation describes a the "balance" between the owner debits (assets) and the creditorcredits (liabilities and equity). The fundamental financial report is a "balance sheet". The word debit means "left" and the word credit means "right". In general Assets (what you possess) have a debit balance and are listed on the left side of a balance sheet. Liabilities (what you owe) and equity (what you own free of debt) have a credit balance and are listed on the right side of a balance sheet. The first known description if this system was published in 1494 by a Franciscan monk named Luca Pacioli.<ref>Accounting Principles, 16th Edition, Phillip Fess, PhD, CPA & Carl S. Warren, PhD, CPA</ref>
While accounting used to be done by hand, on paper, it is much more frequently done using computer programs today.
