In history landlords used to appoint a literate person to write their financial information and to maintain accounts of their customers. The reason behind was that landlords himself were not capable for such functions or they had not enough time to write their accounts personally due to their other engagements. The persons appointed for record keeping were labeled as accountants. Their scope remained limited historically but as the economic horizons changed and businesses started flourishing the dire need for accountants emerged.
In the 19th century when ventures of joint stock companies has been materialized and companies expanded operations from cities to cities and from countries to countries, the need for uniform accounting and reporting standards was terribly sensed to protect the interest of investors. The investors have to make their investment decisions based on financial information provided by the company. Therefore, accurate decisions are not expected if investors do not possess concrete, reliable, and same pattern information for comparing the performance of the companies. Moreover, due to increased regulations and tax complications reliable information is required to the Governments. All these reasons pushed the historically limited role of accountants into more broadened responsibilities and surfaced them into an important member of the management team.
In the current era accountancy became charming career path for most of the youth in new generations and they serve as a practitioner of the accountancy. They are hired by the companies to prepared financial statements on the basis of generally accepted accounting principals worldwide. Further they are also appointed by the firms to provide reasonable assurance about reliability of financial information to help managers, investors, governments, tax authorities, and other stakeholders to make inform decisions and allocate resources.
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