In an accountant's reporting systems, depreciation of a business's fixed assets such as its buildings, equipment, computers, etc. is not recorded as a cash outlay. When an accountant measures profit on the accrual basis of accounting, he or she counts...
Selasa, 27 Desember 2011
What is a sole proprietorship?
A sole proprietorship is the business or an individual who has decided not to carry his business as a separate legal entity, such as a corporation, partnership or limited liability company. This kind of business is not a separate entity. Any time a person...
Senin, 26 Desember 2011
What are other ratios used in financial reporting
The dividend yield ratio tells investors how much cash income they're receiving on their stock investment in a business. This is calculated by dividing the annual cash dividend per share by the current market price of the stock. This can be compared...
How is accounting used in business?
It might seem obvious, but in managing a business, it's important to understand how the business makes a profit. A company needs a good business model and a good profit model. A business sells products or services and earns a certain amount of margin...
Types of Costs
Direct costs are those costs that cann be directly attributed to a product or product line, or to one source of sales revenue, or one business unit or operation of the business. An example of a direct cost would be the cost of tires on a new automobile.Indirect...
Basic Accounting Principles
Accounting has been defined as, by Professor of Accounting at the University of Michigan William A Paton as having one basic function: "facilitating the administration of economic activity. This function has two closely related phases: 1) measuring and...
What is a corporation?
Most businesses start out as a small company, owned by one person or by a partnership. The most common type of business when there are multiple owners is a corporation. The law sees a corporation as real, live person. Like an adult, a corporation is...
Inventory and expenses
Inventory is usually the largest current asset of a business that sells products. If the inventory account is greater at the end of the period than at the start of the reporting period, the amount the business actually paid in cash for that inventory...
Making a Profit
Accountants are responsible for preparing three primary types of financial statements for a business. The income statement reports the profit-making activities of the business and the bottom-line profit or loss for a specified period. The balance sheets...
About GAAP
While many businesses assume that accountants are bound by generally accepted accounting practices and that these are inviolate, nothing could be further from the truth. Everything is subject to interpretation, and GAAP is no different. For one thing,...
What is financial window dressing?
Financial managers can do certain things to increase or decrease net income that's recorded in the year. This is called profit smoothing, income smoothing or just plain old window dressing. This isn't the same as fraud, or cooking the books.Most profit...
Parts of an Income Statement, part 1
The first and most important part of an income statement is the line reporting sales revenue. Businesses need to be consistent from year to year regarding when they record sales. For some business, the timing of recording sales revenue is a major problem,...
Building Cash Reserves
Building a financial cushion for your business is never easy. Experts say that businesses should have anywhere from six to nine months worth of income safely stored away in the bank. If you're a business grossing $250,000 per month, the mere thought...
Managing the Bottom Line
If you don't keep track of how much money you're making, you have no idea whether your business is successful or not. You can't tell how well your marketing is working. And I don't just mean you should know the amount of your total sales or gross revenue....
What is earnings per share
Publicly owned companies must report earnings per share (EPS) below the net income line in their income statements. This is mandated by generally accepted accounting practices (GAAP). The EPS gives investors a means of determining the amount the business...
Balance sheet
A balance sheet is a quick picture of the financial condition of a business at a specific period in time. The activities of a business fall into two separate groups that are reported by an accountant. They are profit-making activities, which includes...
What happened at Enron?
Everyone knows at least a little about the Enron story and the devastation it created in the lives of is employees. It's a story that belongs in any discussion of ethical accounting processes and what happens when accounting standards and ethics are...
Bookkeeping Basics
Most people probably think of bookkeeping and accounting as the same thing, but bookkeeping is really one function of accounting, while accounting encompasses many functions involved in managing the financial affairs of a business. Accountants prepare...
Minggu, 25 Desember 2011
Quasar software
Accounting has become more and more complex as have the businesses that use accounting functions. Fortunately, there are several excellent software packages that can help you manage this important function. Quasar is one such package.All versions of...
Who uses forensic accountants?
Forensic accounting financial investigative specialists work with financial information for the purpose of conveying complicated issues in a manner that others can easily understand. While some forensic accountants and forensic accounting specialists...
What happened in corporate accounting scandals?
When a corporation deliberately conceals or skews information to appear healthy and successful to its shareholders, it has committed corporate or shareholder fraud. Corporate fraud may involve a few individuals or many, depending on the extent to which...
Measuring Costs
Measuring profits or net income is the most important thing accountants do. The second most important task is measuring costs. Costs are extremely important to running a business and managing them effectively can make a substantial difference in a company's...
Revenue and receivables
In most businesses, what drives the balance sheet are sales and expenses. In other words, they cause the assets and liabilities in a business. One of the more complicated accounting items are the accounts receivable. As a hypothetical situation, imagine...
Parts of an Income Statement, Part 3
While some lines of an income statement depend on estimates or forecasts, the interest expense line is a basic equation. When accounting for income tax expense, however, a business can use different accounting methods for some of its expenses than it...
How to analyze a financial statement
It's obvious financial statement have a lot of numbers in them and at first glance it can seem unwieldy to read and understand. One way to interpret a financial report is to compute ratios, which means, divide a particular number in the financial report...
What Is Accounting Anyway?
Anyone who's worked in an office at some point or another has had to go to accounting. They're the people who pay and send out the bills that keep the business running. They do a lot more than that, though. Sometimes referred to as "bean counters" they...
43 What's the difference between private and public company reporting
A public corporation is a business whose securities are traded on the public stock exchanges, such as the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. A private company is held solely by its owners and is not traded publicly. When the shareholders of a private...
Accounting Principles
If everyone involved in the process of accounting followed their own system, or no system at all, there's be no way to truly tell whether a company was profitable or not. Most companies follow what are called generally accepted accounting principles,...
What does an audit do?
If a business breaks the rules of accounting and ethics, it can be liable for legal sanctions against it. It can deliberately deceive its investors and lenders with false or misleading numbers in its financial report. That's where audits come in. Audits...
What are independent auditors?
Indpendent CPA auditors are like referees in the financial reporting arena. The CPA comes in, does an audit of the business's accounting system and methods and gives a report that is attached to the company's financial statements. Publicly owned businesses...
Assets and Liabilities
Making a profit in a business is derived from several different areas. It can get a little complicated because just as in our personal lives, business is run on credit as well. Many businesses sell their products to their customers on credit. Accountants...
Parts of an Income Statement, Part 2
Of course profit and cost of goods sold expense are the two most critical components of an income statement, or at least they're what people will look at first. But an income statement is truly the sum of its parts, and they all need to be considered...
What is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act?
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is a United States federal law passed in response to the recent major corporate and accounting scandals including those at Enron, Tyco International, and WorldCom (now MCI). These scandals resulted in a decline of public...
Gains and Losses
It would probably be ideal if business and life were as simple as producing goods, selling them and recording the profits. But there are often circumstances that disrupt the cycle, and it's part of the accountants job to report these as well. Changes...
Sabtu, 24 Desember 2011
What does an audit report contain?
Most audit reports on financial statements give the business a clean bill of health, or a clean opinion. At the other end of the spectrum, the auditor may state that the financial statements are misleading and should not be relied upon. This negative...
What are partnerships and limited liability companies?
Some business owners choose to create partnerships or limited liability companies instead of a corporation. A partnership can also be called a firm, and refers to an association of a group of individuals working together in a business or professional...
Senin, 19 Desember 2011
Read a Map
Knowing how to read a map isn't innate. The symbols, topography lines and direction helpers all require some understanding before you can read a map effectively. So, when Google Maps deserts you and you're left holding a real map, here is what to do....
Hitchhike
Whether Hitchhike getting a lift to the corner shop, covering the four corners of the world or simply just in case, there is a method Hitchhike to the madness of hitchhiking. The following instructions have been collected from the experiences of many...
Food for Vegetarians
Getting the correct Food for Vegetarians sources of nutrition and sustenance is essential to any diet. It can be a challenge to buy food for vegetarians if you are not familiar with this type of diet. You may end up making them sick due to unfamiliar...
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