Glossary of Accounting Terms

Bling Lingo made simple

Today…again…I was scratching my head over an accounting mess, for which the owner had paid a bookkeeper many dollars over many years. How did it happen? If you don’t know the basics, you are a sitting duck, my friend. You know, accountants do it on purpose. They use weird words to make you think that they are smarter than you are. To keep you in the dark. Or, the less nasty ones just don’t know better.

Good accountants and bookkeepers want you to learn the lingo. They want to help you make the bling, baby! So, read and learn. Keep this glossary handy as you work with your professional money managers. Use it to begin your journey to financial literacy!

Bling Lingo – Glossary of common Accounting Terms…

ACCOUNTING EQUATION: The Balance Sheet is based on the basic accounting equation. That is:

Assets = Equities.

Equity of the company can be held by someone other than the owner. That is called a liability. Because we usually have some liabilities, the accounting equation is usually written…

Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity.

ACCOUNTS: Business activities cause increases and decreases in your assets, liabilities and equity. Your accounting system records these activities in accounts. A number of accounts are needed to summarize the increases and decreases in each asset, liability and owner’s equity account on the Balance Sheet and of each revenue and expense that appears on the Income Statement. You can have a few accounts or hundreds, depending on the kind of detailed information you need to run your business.

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE: Also called A/P. These are bills that your business owes to the government or your suppliers. If you have ‘bought’ it, but haven’t paid for it yet (like when you buy ‘on account’) you create an account payable. These are found in the liability section of the Balance Sheet.

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Also called A/R. When you sell something to someone, and they don’t pay you that minute, you create an account receivable. This is the amount of money your customers owe you for products and services that they bought from you…but haven’t paid for yet. Accounts receivable are found in the current assets section of the Balance Sheet.

ACCRUAL BASIS ACCOUNTING: With accrual basis accounting, you ‘account for’ expenses and sales at the time the transaction occurs. This is the most accurate way of accounting for your business activities. If you sell something to Mrs. Fernwicky today, you would record the sale as of today, even if she plans on paying you in two months. If you buy some paint today, you account for it today, even if you will pay for it next month when the supply house statement comes. Cash basis accounting records the sale when the cash is received and the expense when the check goes out. Not as accurate a picture of what is happening at you company.

ASSETS: The ‘stuff’ the company owns. Anything of value – cash, accounts receivable, trucks, inventory, land. Current assets are those that could be converted into cash easily. (Officially, within a year’s time.) The most current of current assets is cash, of course. Accounts receivable will be converted to cash as soon as the customer pays, hopefully within a month. So, accounts receivable are current assets. So is inventory.

Fixed assets are those things that you wouldn’t want to convert into cash for operating money. For instance, you don’t want to sell your building to cover the supply house bill. Assets are listed, in order of liquidity (how close it is to cash) on the Balance Sheet.

BALANCE SHEET: The Balance Sheet reflects the financial condition of the company on a specific date. The basic accounting formula is the basis for the Balance Sheet:

Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity

The Balance Sheet doesn’t start over. It is the cumulative score from day one of the business to the time the report is created.

CASH FLOW: The movement and timing of money, in and out of the business. In addition to the Balance Sheet and the Income Statement, you may want to report the flow of cash through your business. Your company could be profitable but ‘cash poor’ and unable to pay your bills. Not good!

A cash flow statement helps keep you aware of how much cash came and went for any period of time. A cash flow projection would be an educated guess at what the cash flow situation will be for the future.

Suppose you want to buy a new truck with cash. But that purchase will empty the bank account and leave you without any cash for payroll! For cash flow reasons, you might choose to buy a truck on payments instead.

CHART OF ACCOUNTS: A complete listing of every account in your accounting system. Every transaction in your business needs to be recorded, so that you can keep track of things. Think of the chart of accounts as the peg board on which you hang the business activities.

CREDIT: A credit is used in Double-Entry accounting to increase a liability or an equity account. A credit will decrease an asset account. For every credit there is a debit. These are the two balancing components of every journal entry. Credits and debits keep the basic accounting equation (Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity) in balance as you record business activities.

DEBIT: A debit is used in Double-Entry accounting to increase an asset account. A debit will decrease a liability or an equity account. For every debit there is a credit.

DIRECT COSTS: Also called cost of goods sold, cost of sales or job site expenses. These are expenses that include labor costs and materials. These expenses can be directly tracked to a specific job. If the job didn’t happen, the direct costs wouldn’t have been incurred. (Compare direct cost with indirect costs to get a better understanding of the term.) Direct costs are found on the Income Statement, right below the income accounts.

Income – Direct Costs = Gross Margin.

DOUBLE-ENTRY ACCOUNTING: An accounting system used to keep track of business activities. Double-Entry accounting maintains the Balance Sheet: Assets = Liabilities + Owner’s Equity. When dollars are recorded in one account, they must be accounted for in another account in such a way that the activity is well documented and the Balance Sheet stays in balance.

You may not need to be an expert in Double-Entry accounting, but the person who is responsible for creating the financial statements better get pretty good at it. If that is you, go back through the book and focus on the ‘gray’ sheets. Study the examples and see how the Double-Entry method acts as a check and balance of your books.

Remember the law of the universe…what goes around, comes around. This is the essence of Double-Entry accounting.

EQUITY: Funds that have been supplied to the company to get the ‘stuff’. Equities show ownership of the assets or claims against the assets. If someone other than the owner has claims on the assets, it is called a liability.

Total Assets – Total Liabilities = Net Equity

This is another way of stating the basic accounting equation that emphasizes how much of the assets you own. Net equity is also called net worth.

EXPENSE: Also called costs. Expenses are decreases in equity. These are dollars paid out to suppliers, vendors, Uncle Sam, employees, charities, etc. Remember to pay bills thankfully, because it takes money to make money. Expenses are listed on the Income Statement. They should be split into two categories, direct costs and indirect costs. The basic equation for the Income Statement is:

Revenues – Expenses = Profit

(You’ll see a profit if there are more revenues than expenses!…or a loss, if expenses are more than revenues.)

Remember, all costs need to be included in your selling price. The customer pays for everything. In exchange, you give the customer your services. What a deal!

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS: refer to the Balance Sheet and the Income Statement. The Balance Sheet is a report that shows the financial condition of the company. The Income Statement (also called the Profit and Loss statement or the ‘P&L’) is the profit performance summary.

Financial Statements can include the supporting documents like cash flow reports, accounts receivable reports, transaction register, etc. Any report that measures the movement of money in your company.

Financial Statements are what the bank wants to see before it loans you money. The IRS insists that you share the score with them, and asks for your Financial Statements every year.

GENERAL LEDGER: Once upon a time, accounting systems were kept in a book that listed the increases and decreases in all the accounts of the company. That book was called the general ledger. Today, you probably have a computerized accounting system. Still, the general ledger is a collection of all Balance Sheet and Income Statement accounts…all the assets, liabilities and equity. It is the report that shows ALL the activity in the company. Often this listing is called a detail trial balance on the report menu of your accounting program. The detail trial balance is my favorite report when I am trying to find a mistake, or make sure that we have entered information in the right accounts.

GROSS PROFIT: This is how much money you have left after you have subtracted the direct costs from the selling price.

Income – Direct Costs = Gross Profit. When this is expressed as a percentage, it is call Gross Margin.

This is a good number to scrutinize each month, and to track in terms of percentage to total sales over the course of time. The higher the better with gross margin! You need to have enough money left at this point to pay all your indirect costs and still end up with a profit.

INCOME STATEMENT: also called the Profit and Loss Statement, or P&L, or Statement of Operations. This is a report that shows the changes in the equity of the company as a result of business operations. It lists the income (or revenues, or sales), subtracts the expenses and shows you the profit J! (Or loss L.) This report covers a period of time and summarizes the money in and the money out.

The Income Statement is like a magnifying glass that shows the detail of activities that cause changes in the equity section of the Balance Sheet.

INDIRECT COST: Also called overhead or operating expenses. These expenses are indirectly related to the services you provide to customers. Indirect costs include office salaries, rent, advertising, telephone, utilities…costs to keep a ‘roof overhead’. Every cost that is not a direct cost is an indirect cost. Indirect costs do not go away when sales drop off.

INVENTORY: Also called stock. These are materials that you purchase with the intent to sell, but you haven’t sold them yet. Inventory is found on the balance sheet under assets. It is considered a current asset because you will convert it into cash as soon as you sell it. Beware of turning cash into inventory. You may run out of cash. Work with your suppliers to keep inventory SMALL.

JOURNAL: This is the diary of your business. It keeps track of business activities chronologically. Each business activity is recorded as a journal entry. The Double-Entry will list the debit account and the credit account for each transaction on the day that it occurred. In your reports menu in your accounting system, the journal entries are listed in the transaction register.

LIABILITIES: Like equities, these are sources of assets – how you got the ‘stuff’. These are claims against assets by someone other than the owner. This is what the company owes! Notes payable, taxes payable and loans are liabilities. Liabilities are categorized as current liabilities (need to pay off within a year’s time, like payroll taxes) or long term liabilities (pay-back time is more than a year, like your building mortgage).

MONEY: Also called moola, scratch, gold, coins, cash, change, chicken feed, green stuff, BLING, etc. Money is the form we use to exchange energy, goods and services for other energy, goods and services. Used to buy things that you need or want. Beats trading for chickens in the global marketplace.

Money in and of itself is neither good or bad. I want you to make lots of it, and do great things with it!

NET INCOME: Also called net profit, net earnings, current earnings or bottom line. (No wonder accounting is confusing – look at all those words that mean the same thing!)

After you have subtracted ALL expenses (including taxes) from revenues, you are left with net income. The word net means basic, fundamental. This is a very important item on the income statement because it tells you how much money is left after business operations. Think of net income like the score of a single basketball game in a series. Net income tells you if you won or lost, and by how much, for a given period of time.

By the way, if net income is a negative number, it’s called a loss. You want to avoid those. The net income is reflected on the Balance Sheet in the equity section, under current earnings (or net profit). Net income results in an increase in owner’s equity. A loss results in a decrease in owner’s equity.

RETAINED EARNINGS: The amount of net income earned and retained by the business. If net income is like the score after a single basketball game, retained earnings is the lifetime statistic. Retained earnings is found in the equity section of the Balance Sheet. It keeps track of how much of the total owner’s equity was earned and retained by the business versus how much capital has been invested from the owners (paid-in capital).

Each month, the net profits are reflected in the Balance Sheet as current earnings. At the end of the year, current earnings are added to the retained earnings account.

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Managing Personal Finance Has Never Been Easier

Managing personal finance may not be everyone’s cup of tea, especially for those who have no experience in business and management. An accurate financial plan will ease your work and guarantee a successful completion of your financial goals. Here, on our website, we provide helpful information for an accurate finance comparison that will obviously make your work easier.

Managing personal finance may not be the easiest job. If you are one of those who manage their finances themselves, you will surely not find this activity as being the most enjoyable in the whole world. It requires a lot of time and attention, but it is indispensable to your or your family’s financial well being. You can find a helping hand here, on our website, where you have the updated information you need in order to do a realistic finance comparison.

A key component for efficient management of your personal finance is financial planning. This dynamic process requires regular monitoring and reevaluation. Otherwise, you risk missing points of evaluation and this could damage your finance control. You should keep under control this circular process by repeated verifications and intelligent manipulation. The following five steps should organize and make your planning easier.

The first step is an assessment of one’s personal financial situation. You will do it by compiling, onto a piece of paper, all the personal assets, income and outcome. You should use a simplified balance sheet for listing the values of personal assets (for instance, car, house, stocks and bank account) along with the values of liabilities (such as credit card debt, bank loan and mortgage). Moreover, you should make sure you list personal income and expenses, on a personal cash flow statement form.

The second and most enjoyable step is setting the goals. With this stage, one should formulate his or her material desires in a financial language. You can set long-term goals can such as retiring at 65 years old with a significant personal net worth. You can also make short-term plans, for example: buying a house or a car by paying a monthly mortgage for 3 years but no more than 25% of monthly income. You can also establish several goals both long and short-term, in the limit of your financial resources.

After setting the goals, you must develop an efficient plan in order to accomplish them. The plan should detail the exact actions that you need to undertake. This is the third and most difficult part of your personal finance management as it asks for thorough research for the most convenient loan, investment or mortgage deals. An easy way to approach this matter is by using the services we offer here, on our site, where you will find thousands of updated offers available for adequate finance comparison. In this manner, you can avoid or diminish planned financial sacrifices such as reducing expenses or increasing your employment income.

Execution of one’s personal financial plan, monitoring and reassessment are the fourth and, correspondingly, fifth steps in efficient personal finance management. Discipline and perseverance are necessary for accomplishing this part of the plan. As time passes, conscious fulfillment of every action included in the financial plan must associate with continuous monitoring and reassessment until the fulfillment of the financial plan.

Managing your personal finance has never been easier. With access to all the pieces of information you need, you can do a realistic finance comparison and you can develop a more efficient personal financial plan. Here, we offer you the possibility to compare thousands of offers on credit card, loans, insurance and investment deals in UK and not only.

Here, on our website, you will find accurate information on all credit card, loans, insurance and investment deals you can use for an efficient finance comparison. Personal finance management has never been so accessible.

Accounting Services New York ?proper Deliberation is the Key to Success

The accounting service forms the toughest area to deal with, as even a minute error can alter the entire accounts. The accounting service New York is a vast area of service that handles the entire monetary domains that includes several processes like the generation of invoice, balance sheet, the trial balance, the profit-loss estimation, the economic reports and all issues related with the monetary section of the business. With the advancement of technologies, the accounting service around the globe has become easier and accurate. However, the stage of accounting needs extra deliberation to be more accurate in efficient usage of funds and other transactions.

The total amount of money attributed to the company’s account and the money debited from the customer’s account as a mode of payment are certain important points related to the accounting service. With the signing of a deal, at times the company may access some advanced cash from the clients. The accounting service is responsible for the safe handling of the advanced cheque, drafts or the cash as the payment made by the client and is responsible for the invoice generating by the company as per the billing statement. This is simply a part of official account service you offer. Moreover, there are various other areas, where the accounting services New York needs to participate actively.

The purchase of raw materials or petty office items, the major role is performed by the accounting service in managing the monetary transactions accurately by generating proves such as the bills or invoice. Another area where the accounting service needs proper deliberation is the tax filing session. To evaluate the exact tax amount that need to be filed, the accountants need to tally the whole accounts, and finance of the year.

Most of the times, the big scale business and accounting companies experience an overwhelmed accounting service managing. The best way to simplify the task in this case is to outsource the accounting service to some other relevant source. The outsourcing phenomenon saves the ultimate cost, the employee risk as well as the time consumed. Thus, outsourcing of accounts service is definitely a blessing for accountants in disguise. However, the accounting services New York obtained need to be an authorized one and therefore before outsourcing, the authorization of the receiver is to be checked for maintaining perfection.

The accounting service is an area of great importance for any kind of business irrespective of the size or working areas. Both the big business as well as the small business undertakings requires a perfect accounting service to attain success. However, the most important point of concern regarding the accounting service is proper deliberation as a minute error causes a huge loss to the company.

The accounting services New York holds highly skilled and experienced professional accountants to carry out the complicated task without even offering a minute mistake. Thus, the efficiency of the accounting service is evidently as deliberate attention is offered to the entire service. Now, you know where you will get highly proficient accounting services.

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Accounting Principles

In all, there are nine accounting principles that are used to prepare all business accounts. Any business accounts that are created using any of these principles, are deemed by the professionals in the accounting world, as accounts that were prepared with principles that are generally accepted by all accountants throughout the world.

If these principles were not used, and financial data was just thrown together haphazardly, then the accounting for your companies accounts, would be complicated to say the least. All of these nine accounting principles will help to keep your corporate accounting needs straight, and in a methodical method that every accountant will be able to understand.

The mother of all accounting principles is the accrual principle, and will ensure that all of the business revenues and expenses are methodically recorded when the money is earned, and not when it is paid for. There is a set way that money is recognized in the accounting world of high financed businesses, and the principles of revenue recognition are followed to make sure the recognition is interpreted right.

Accountants will use a historical cost principle when they are filling in the financial data for your business accounts. These accounts can glace at a balance sheet, and see what the price of the item that was sold, cost the company that they are recording business accounts records for. There are other account transactions that might be confused with this principle, and that is the current cost accounting feature.

For financial records to be consistent, accountants often require their clients to methodically record their financial transactions using the consistency principles. This way their financial information is recorded the same, time after time, and there will be no confusion over the entries after a long period of time.

If other principles are mixed with the constancy principles, the end result may provide the wrong financial figures. Tax auditors find that this will be the case in businesses that are performing illegal activities, and do not want to leave a lot of financial information that can be easily traced, and legitimate business do not want to leave this bad impression on such a major faction such as the Internal Revenue Service.

To keep financial accounting of business records from becoming confused with other expenditures made by the business owner, accountants like to use the separate legal entity concept when they are performing financial services for a company, and the personal banking transactions of a person that is small business owner. Some business owners get confused and make withdrawals from their business accounts for personal use, and make the wrong entries in both sets of checkbooks.

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Final segment in series of 17 videos describing the essential ideas typically covered in early weeks of a university-level accounting principles course. This explains reversing entries.

Nj Accounting for Hassle -free Monetary Transactions

Accounting has been a very time-consuming and pestering job from the very start for most organizations, unless they have expert accountants at their disposal to record their everyday monetary transactions. So, if you are also a business owner who has been wasting your time with tedious accounting calculations, you need not worry anymore as NJ accounting professionals are there for your assistance. Accuracy and confidentiality of documents and information are the two primary things that are assured to business organizations when they select reputed accounting firm that operate in New Jersey.

To ensure the efficiency in work and the accounting books that is maintained, make sure you hire competent accountants. Experienced NJ accounting professionals are proficient in their work and provide impeccable accounting services. They do not waste your time with careless miscalculations and value their time as well as yours. However, hiring a capable accounting team is a necessity for every firm, irrespective of the size of the organization. But recruitment of these accounting experts doesn’t fit the budget of all business organizations. Not only do these professionals demand handsome salaries, infrastructure, bonus and other manpower expenses of these accounting professionals are also quite high.

Hence, as the services of NJ accounting experts are undeniable, a good alternative can be seen in the form of outsourcing accounting firms in New Jersey. Once you trust a NJ outsourcing accounting firm with the responsibility of the accounting management of your business organization, you can be rest assured that you will get flawless account books, whenever you want.

From the routine task of maintaining ledger books and making everyday journal entries to overcoming the hurdles of several complicated calculation in making the final balance sheet at the year end, all the tasks are handled by NJ accounting experts. One of the best things about outsourcing NJ accounting services is that it lessens your burden of maintaining a separate accounting department and reduces your expenses on accounting services considerably. Also, as all experienced experts are involved in these outsourcing companies, you are assured of error-free work at cheaper rates.

Furthermore, you can also trust these experts for the investment decisions of your company and where you need to cut down on added expenses for better utilization of the available money. Accountants in New Jersey also prove to be great asset for business organization in their time of financial crunch. Several updated software are also used by these professionals that eases out their burden of recording umpteen number of accounting entries everyday and that too without the slightest of discrepancy.

With so many benefits being offered by the services of NJ expert accountants, it is imperative that you cannot afford to miss the opportunity to hire these professionals. You can search for them online by typing in the keyword “NJ accounting” and you will have the websites and contact details of some of the best accountants offering their services in the New Jersey area. So, do not while away your time anymore due to accounting miscalculations and hire these professionals today!

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Episode 1×01 “Out of great boredom comes great songs.”