There's a lot of great information to be found on the internet! However, you must be careful which websites you use when gathering information for your research.
This page provides listings of high-quality websites to help you learn more about accounting and finance.
How can you tell whether you're looking at a good source or a bad one? Here are some tips:
Look at the name:
Find the contact information:
Look for sources:
These tutorials will help you understand what to look for (and avoid!) when evaluating websites and other information sources:
The disciplines of accounting and finance are related to each other, but also very different.
Accounting deals mainly with the rules, procedures, and processes of financial accountability. The Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) is a benchmark publication that outlines the standards and practices of creating, maintaining, and auditing financial records. Accountants regularly engage in report reconciliation, itemization, invoicing, tax preparation, payment processing, and other financial matters necessary for business operations.
Finance deals mainly with understanding, analyzing, and managing cash flows, credit markets, investments, and other financial assets. People who study finance examine the monetary resources and profitability of a business with a keen eye towards future financial returns and forecasting. People in finance frequently engage with banks, creditors, shareholders, government agencies, donors, and others who have a financial relationship with a business.
You can read some job descriptions that are available to people in accounting and finance by clicking the links below. These are from the Occupational Outlook Handbook provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Here are professional organizations and associations that may be of interest to you. Many of them provide free resources, but membership is often required to use all of their services.
Consider joining professional organizations now or in the future, as membership opens opportunities for conferences, networking, and professional development.
If you're using Google to find websites, try including one of the following domains in your search to ensure the most high-quality results.
EXAMPLE
A search for government websites only involving the term "taxation" looks like this:
A search for institutions of higher education websites only involving the term "actuarial science" looks like this:
In either case, you simply follow your search terms with the word "site," a colon, a period, and the domain you want.
You can also try site:.org and site:.int, but sometimes those sites can still be questionable.
Keep in mind that international higher education sites (for example, those from Canada, the U.K., Australia, etc.) do not use the .edu domain. Instead, try looking for the .ac (academic institutions) domain.