Accounting
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
This accounting trivia quiz has 255 free questions with answers and covers the profession from Mesopotamian clay tokens and Luca Pacioli's 1494 textbook to Sarbanes-Oxley: double-entry bookkeeping and the accounting equation, debits and credits, the four financial statements, depreciation, LIFO and FIFO, GAAP versus IFRS, the FASB and the IASB, the Big Four firms and how they got their names, the CPA exam and the first CPA licence, the IRS and Tax Day, and the scandals at Enron, WorldCom and Madoff that changed the rules. There are lighter questions too, on the abacus, VisiCalc, and the celebrities who trained as accountants first. It is built for accounting firms' team socials, business students, CPA candidates who want a break from the real thing, and anyone hosting a finance-themed round. Easy questions cover the vocabulary every bookkeeper knows; the hard ones ask which ledger came first and where the UK's tax year got its strange start date. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 255 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Franciscan friar published the first printed description of double-entry bookkeeping in 1494?
Luca Pacioli
Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar, printed the first description of double-entry bookkeeping in his 1494 Summa de arithmetica, written in Italian so merchants could read it.
Q 02Which Renaissance artist illustrated Pacioli's Divina proportione (1509)?
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci drew the illustrations; the two worked together from about 1497 to 1506.
Q 03The oldest surviving complete double-entry system is the 1340 Messari accounts of which Italian city?
Genoa
Genoa: the 1340 ledgers of the city's massari (treasurers) are the oldest complete double-entry books; Florence's Farolfi fragments of 1299-1300 are older but incomplete.
Q 04Accounting records over 7,000 years old, in the form of clay tokens, have been found in which ancient region?
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia: clay tokens dating from around 8000 BC were used by temple economies to track goods, thousands of years before cuneiform writing developed.
Q 05The word 'auditor' comes from the Latin audire, meaning what?
To hear
Audire means to hear: early audits were literally heard, with the accounts read aloud to the person checking them.
Q 06The words debit and credit come from the Latin debere and credere, meaning what?
To owe and to entrust
To owe and to entrust: debere and credere gave us debit and credit, and by convention debits go on the left of a ledger and credits on the right.
Q 07The fundamental accounting equation states that assets equal liabilities plus what?
Equity
Equity: assets equal liabilities plus owners' equity, and every double-entry transaction keeps the two sides in balance, which is why a balance sheet balances.
Q 08Which financial statement alone shows a company's position at a single point in time?
The balance sheet
The balance sheet gives a snapshot of what a company owns and owes as of one date, while the income and cash flow statements cover a period.
Q 09The cash flow statement is divided into operating, financing and which third category of activities?
Investing
Investing activities complete the trio; FASB Statement 95 made the statement mandatory in 1987, and most companies prepare it by the indirect method starting from net income.
Q 10Which type of asset generally cannot be depreciated for tax purposes?
Bare land
Bare land: land does not wear out or get used up, so it has no determinable useful life to depreciate over, unlike buildings, machinery and vehicles.
Q 11The straight-line method divides an asset's cost, less its expected salvage value, by what?
Its useful life in years
Its useful life in years; the declining-balance method instead front-loads the charge by applying a fixed percentage to the remaining book value each year.
Q 12Which inventory costing method is allowed under US GAAP but explicitly prohibited under IFRS?
LIFO
LIFO: IAS 2 prohibits last-in-first-out and allows only FIFO or weighted average cost (or specific identification), while US GAAP permits LIFO, partly for its tax advantage.
Q 13The body that sets US GAAP for public companies, the FASB, is based in which Connecticut city?
Norwalk
Q 21What is an auditor's opinion called when the financial statements are found fairly presented?
Unqualified opinion
Unqualified opinion: the auditor states the financial statements present fairly, in all material respects; a qualified opinion flags an exception, and an adverse opinion says they are materially misstated.
Q 22Enron traders were taped gloating about overcharging 'Grandma Millie' during which state's power crisis?
California
California: tapes released in 2004 caught Enron traders joking about 'Grandma Millie' as they gamed the state's 2000-01 electricity crisis with schemes nicknamed Death Star and Fat Boy.
Q 23Which Enron vice president warned Kenneth Lay in 2001 the company might 'implode in a wave of accounting scandals'?
It replaced the AICPA's Accounting Principles Board in 1973 and is led by seven full-time board members.
Q 14The International Accounting Standards Board was established in what year?
2001
2001: the IASB began work in April 2001, taking over from a predecessor committee dating from 1973, and the EU made IFRS mandatory for listed companies from 2005.
Q 15The world's first professional body of accountants received its royal charter in 1854 in which country?
Scotland
Scotland: the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh received its royal charter in 1854 and was the first body to use the title chartered accountant.
Q 16The first law creating the Certified Public Accountant credential was passed in 1896 in which US state?
New York
Licensee number one, Frank Broaker, got his certificate on experience alone without sitting an exam.
Q 17Which organisation sets the Uniform CPA Examination in the United States?
The AICPA
The AICPA writes and scores the Uniform CPA Examination, which NASBA and the state boards administer; since 2024 it has had three core sections plus one discipline section.
Q 18William Welch Deloitte became the first independent auditor of which public company, in 1849?
The Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway appointed Deloitte in 1849, usually cited as the first independent audit of a public company; the London practice he opened in 1845 grew into the Deloitte network.
Q 19The letters in KPMG stand for Klynveld, Peat, Marwick and which fourth surname?
Goerdeler
The firm was born in 1987 when KMG and Peat Marwick joined in what was then the first mega-merger of big accounting firms.
Q 20Which firm merged with Price Waterhouse in July 1998?
Coopers & Lybrand
Coopers & Lybrand: its July 1998 merger with Price Waterhouse created PricewaterhouseCoopers and turned the Big Six accounting firms into the Big Five.
Sherron Watkins
Sherron Watkins, an Enron vice president, sent Lay an August 2001 memo warning the company might 'implode in a wave of accounting scandals'; Time named her a 2002 Person of the Year with Cynthia Cooper and Coleen Rowley.
Q 24WorldCom inflated its earnings by billions mainly through what accounting trick?
Capitalising line costs
Capitalising line costs: WorldCom booked routine network lease fees as capital assets; internal auditor Cynthia Cooper found the entries in June 2002, the overstatement topped $11 billion, and CEO Bernard Ebbers got 25 years.
Q 25The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 created which new body to oversee the auditors of public companies?
The PCAOB
The PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) was created by the 2002 Act, named for Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael Oxley, to register and inspect the auditors of public companies.
Q 26Which section of Sarbanes-Oxley requires management to report on internal controls over financial reporting?
404
Section 404 mandates reporting on internal controls; Section 302 makes the CEO and CFO personally certify the accuracy of the financial statements.
Q 27Bernie Madoff's roughly $65 billion Ponzi scheme was 'audited' by what kind of outfit?
A three-person shop
A three-person shop: Friehling & Horowitz, a storefront firm in New City, New York, signed off on Madoff's books; Harry Markopolos had warned the SEC from 2000 that the returns were impossible, and Madoff got 150 years in 2009.
Q 28Al Capone was finally sent to prison in 1931 for what offence?
Income tax evasion
Income tax evasion, five counts, earned him 11 years and Alcatraz; the strategy of pursuing gangsters through tax law came from Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt.
Q 29The office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue was created in 1862 under which president?
Abraham Lincoln
The bureau was only renamed the Internal Revenue Service in 1953, after a corruption scandal.
Q 30Before it moved to April 15 in the 1950s, the US individual tax filing deadline fell on which date?
March 15
March 15 was the deadline from 1918 until the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 moved it to April 15 for returns filed from 1955; the very first returns under the modern income tax had been due March 1.