Accounting is the process of keeping track of monetary transactions and data in a structured, consistent, and understandable style so that stakeholders in a business or organization may make informed economic decisions. Early forms of accounting used clay tokens to keep track of products and livestock, but the discipline has since evolved into a sophisticated system for recording a wide variety of financial transactions and details. The first step toward IAS, or International Accounting Standards, was done in 1959. Since then, accounting groups and others have collaborated to form the International Accounting Standards Committee. In 1997, the IASC was restructured to better enable the convergence of various national accounting standards and practices toward a single, high-quality set of global accounting standards. Established in 1973, it issued the foundational documents for what is now known as International Accounting Standards until the year 2000. As the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) was abolished in 2001, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) was tasked with publishing international accounting standards. The integration of global financial markets and the need of investors for more uniformity in the financial reports of multinational firms both demand the globalization of IFRS.