Comparıson between cash based and accrual based publıc accountancy and its applıcatıon in Turkey

In the past, public organisations used various different accountancy systems.This situation caused lack of accountancy unity and comparability in public sector.Only revenues and expenses in the budget could be monitored and the rightinformation could not be presented to the users. As mentioned above, cash basedpublic accountancy system which was incapable in many cases was used manyyears in our country and considering the incapabilities, changes were made in publicaccountancy system. With those changes, public accountancy unity has beenmaintained and an accountancy system which provides account consolidation hasbeen created.Cash based public accountancy system records the revenues when collectedand the expenses when paid, accrual based public accountancy system records therevenues and expenses when they?re realized. With these arrangements cash basedaccountancy system has not been left at all, an accountancy system using bothsystems at the same time created. In the past years only results about the budgetcould be obtained from the accountancy data, but now with the latest arrangementsresults about the activities can be obtained from accountancy data. So, publicaccountancy has become an accountancy system which can monitor the revenuesand expenses in the budget and debts, credits and assets of the government.This study consists of three parts.In the first part, the characteristics, extent, purpose, registration methods andaccounting systems of public accountancy are handled.In the second part, considering the lack of capabilities in the publicaccountancy system has been compared to the accrual based accountancy systemand the benefits of the improvements in the accountancy system has been handled.In the third part, to make a comparison between the two systems based on theaccount plans some examples are made and the superiority of the accrual basedaccountancy system is explained.After this study, it?s shown that the improvements in the public accountancysystem has created an accountancy system which can present detailed informationwhen needed, create financial tables, classify revenues and expenses by their duedates, also monitoring the debts, credits and assets of the government, providingfinancial transparency and accountability as expected from an accountancy system.Key Words1. Governmental Accounting2. Accounting Systems3. Cash Basis4. Accural Basis