Institutional Practices of Retail Accounting

In terms of current economic conditions, purchase and sale of goods is a key aspect of many enterprises’ activity. Thus, income generated to trading goods is an important financial and economic indicator of retailers by which one can understand if the goods sold comply with market demand. The efficiency of managerial decisions depends considerably on the financial information obtained through accounting. The article aims to study existing institutional practices and develop practical proposals for improving the accounting of goods. The methods of receipt and disposal of goods at trade enterprises were systematized. The forms of sale of goods, depending on the type of trade were revealed, which determines a certain specificity of accounting for the sale of goods. The principles of reflecting the obligations of retailers on off-balance sheet accounts for orders made through the online store were substantiated. Based on the study of documentation of operations for goods purchase, transportation, and storage, it has been defined that the requisites in primary documents are to identify the economic operation, on the basis of which the document is drawn up. Enterprises can elaborate independently their own forms of primary documents on the basis of standard forms provided their elaborated documents have all the obligatory requisites. The recommendations for improving the analytical accounting of sales of goods at trade enterprises were provided, the implementation of which will control and manage the sale of goods to increase the traded amount. In particular, based on the results of the analysis of accounting of trade enterprise liabilities, it has been proposed to represent the enterprise liabilities for online-store orders on the off-balance accounts (For example, to open subaccount 026 “Liabilities for Internet-store orders”). This approach will help represent the online sale of goods more completely and objectively as currently the Internet-realization of goods is one of the most popular forms of sales.