Re: Making it up?
Outside the realms of overtly creative accountancy, the rules of finance are fairly deterministic
I'm not an accountant, but I believe this claim is wildly inaccurate.
First, we're talking here about accounting, not finance. The latter, as a term of art, generally refers specifically to the analysis of assets and liabilities; the former is broader, dealing with various non-financial aspects of economic entities as well.
Second, which rules? GAAP? IFRS? In this case, I believe (haven't bothered to confirm, but this is usual for US and UK) we have an organization using the former purchasing one that used the latter.
Third, even the most surface understanding of GAAP or IFRS shows how many more or less subjective decisions are made when accounting for various events under them. Just look at a summary of GAAP or IFRS, such as Wikipedia's; it will be full of loaded phrases such as "as long as it is reasonable to do so", "may be charged", "decided based on", "should be considered", "selection of", "measured in either".
It's not a matter of throwing a bunch of numbers into a spreadsheet and toting them up at the bottom.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
