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

Abstract 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.