Most industries fall into one of two categories. They are either a service business or a product or merchandising company where the owner sells goods or products to the public. A service business provides a service like cleaning, repairing or teaching. Usually, companies hire accounting firms to keep their books. The firm will keep tabs on their accounts payable and receivable information.
However, the company is overall responsible for this information and paying their government taxes. For the most part, everything would be the same for an accountant who is doing accounting practices for a merchandising company and a service company. There is one exception. For the merchandising company, an additional journal entry for inventory may be needed to show what products were sold.