The public accounts is the name of the Comptabilité which the administrations and the communities of a country hold to record their receipts and their expenditure.

The denomination public accounts recovers actually a great diversity of systems countable, suitable for the type of communities concerned (the State and its public corporations, various territorial collectivities and their public corporations).

In France

The principal rules of the public accounts, all confused communities, result from the general payment on the public accounts.
The behavior of the public accounts is ensured in France by the public countable of the Head office of the Public accounts (DGCP), also called Treasury, placed under the responsibility of the minister in charge for the Budget. The network of the Treasury has an establishment on the whole of the national territory.

Certain entities under the control of the public (certain public corporations related to commercial industrial and, the state enterprises, etc) do not follow the rules of the public accounts but that of the business accounting (or private accountancy). These establishments in spite of are very subjected to the control of the State.

The accountancy of the State

The countable architecture of the State was deeply reformed by the organic law of the 1^er August 2001 relating to the finance laws (LOLF). The countable shutter of the LOLF set up an accountancy of the State which must take as a starting point the countable standards resulting from the business accounting (Article 30): patrimonial logic, accountancy of exercise. In addition to the follow-up of the expenditure and receipts, this one thus recalls from now on the inheritance of the State. It will in the long term allow the analysis of the costs of the various public policies by the Parliament and the citizen. However, the accounting method used still concerns a logical of case (Article 28).
The public accountant is charged with the held of the accounts and the control of regularity under the conditions provided for by the general regulation on the public accounts. He belongs to the network of the Treasury. These civils servant, concerned with the ministry for finances, box the receipts and pay the expenditure of the various communities. For this reason, they engage to them responsibility, which is personal and pecuniary. On the other hand, the accountancy of the different public corporations is held by an independent accountant (school, university, arrange blood etc).

The accountancy of the local public sector

The accountancy of the local government agencies is also held by the accountants of the Treasury.

Various accountancies are applicable to the local public sector, according to the type of communities (common, departments, areas) and according to the nature of the carried on activity if it is about a local public corporation (administrative public service or public service related to commercial industrial and). These different types of accountancies are declined by countable instructions of the Treasury: instruction M14 for the communes, M52 for the departments, M71 for the areas, M4 for the services related to commercial industrial and. The countable instruction M14 is applicable to the communes since January 1st, 1997. It was the subject of an important update at January 1st, 2006. Like all the public accounts, it follows the principles posed by the chart of accounts applicable to the private sector: accountancy in noted rights, partly double (correspondence enters the resources and their employment). For the expenditure as for the receipts, it distinguishes the operations from operation (produced and loads) of the organization of its operations of investment (operations on the inheritance).

See too

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