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The REA Accounting Model: A Generalized Framework for Accounting Systems in a Shared Data Environment.

William E. McCarthy

Assistant Professor of Accounting, Michigan State University. 1

The Accounting Review 1982

ABSTRACT: This paper proposes a generalized accounting framework designed to be used in a shared data environment where both accountants and non-accountants are interested in maintaining information about the same set of phenomena. This framework, called the REA accounting model, is developed using data modeling techniques, and its underlying structure is found to consist of sets representing economic resources, economic events, and economic agents plus relationships among those sets. Correspondence of REA elements with the accounting theories of Ijiri and Mattessich is discussed. Finally, practical use of the model in the database design phases of view modeling and view integration is presented, and some REA representations of accounting objects are reconciled with those representations found in conventional double-entry systems.

DOI
10.2308/tar-4487748
Volume
57 (3)
Pages
554-578
Language
en
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