This accounting trivia quiz has 210 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.
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Q 01Which Franciscan friar published the first printed description of double-entry bookkeeping in 1494?
Luca Pacioli
His Summa de arithmetica was written in Italian rather than Latin so merchants could read it, and he later taught mathematics to Leonardo da Vinci.
Q 02Which Renaissance artist illustrated Pacioli's Divina proportione (1509)?
Leonardo da Vinci
The book explored the golden ratio, and 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
Fragments of the Farolfi ledger from Florence in 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
Temple economies used the tokens to track goods long before writing itself developed.
Q 05The word 'auditor' comes from the Latin audire, meaning what?
To hear
Early audits were literally heard: accounts were 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
Pacioli's book popularised both terms; 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
Every double-entry transaction keeps the two sides in balance, which is what makes a balance sheet balance.
Q 08Which financial statement alone shows a company's position at a single point in time?
The balance sheet
It is also called the statement of financial position, and it is one of the four basic financial statements.
Q 09The cash flow statement is divided into operating, financing and which third category of activities?
Investing
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
Land does not wear out; the equivalent spreading of cost for intangibles is called amortisation and for natural resources depletion.
Q 11The straight-line method divides an asset's cost, less its expected salvage value, by what?
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
IFRS requires either first-in-first-out or weighted average cost.
Q 13The body that sets US GAAP for public companies, the FASB, is based in which Connecticut city?
Norwalk
It replaced the AICPA's Accounting Principles Board in 1973 and is led by seven full-time board members.
Q 21Which accounting firm collapsed after conviction for shredding Enron documents?
Arthur Andersen
The conviction was later overturned, but by then almost every client had left.
Q 22Enron's December 2001 filing was then the largest US corporate bankruptcy. In which city was Enron based?
Houston
It listed $63.4 billion in assets, and executives had used mark-to-market accounting and hundreds of special purpose entities to hide debt.
Q 23Which Enron vice president warned Kenneth Lay in 2001 the company might 'implode in a wave of accounting scandals'?
Sherron Watkins
CFO Andrew Fastow later pleaded guilty and served six years; Jeffrey Skilling's 24-year sentence was cut to 14.
Q 14The International Accounting Standards Board, which issues IFRS, was established in what year?
2001
It succeeded the International Accounting Standards Committee, 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
It was the first to use the title 'chartered accountant', and the letters CA remain an exclusive privilege of its members in the UK.
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 exam now has three core sections plus a discipline section, and states typically require 120 to 150 credit hours to sit it.
Q 18William Welch Deloitte, who opened his London office in 1845, is credited as the first independent auditor of a public company. Which company?
The Great Western Railway
The firm that grew from that office is now the largest professional services network in the world by revenue.
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 20PricewaterhouseCoopers was formed in July 1998 when Price Waterhouse merged with which firm?
Coopers & Lybrand
That merger turned the Big Six into the Big Five; the collapse of Arthur Andersen made it the Big Four.
Q 24WorldCom inflated its earnings by billions mainly through what accounting trick?
Capitalising line costs
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 Act was named for Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael Oxley, and George W. Bush called it the biggest business reform since FDR.
Q 26Which section of Sarbanes-Oxley requires management to report on internal controls over financial reporting?
404
Section 302 is the one that 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
Analyst Harry Markopolos had told the SEC from 1999 that the returns were mathematically impossible; Madoff got 150 years in 2009.
Q 28Al Capone was finally sent to prison in 1931 for what offence?
Income tax evasion
He was convicted on five counts and given 11 years, ending up in 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
The first Form 1040 appeared in 1913, the year the Sixteenth Amendment authorised a federal income tax, and only applied to incomes over $3,000.