The easy way to manage business financesQuickBooks is known for helping their users effectively handle their financial and business management tasks, and QuickBooks 2018 AllinOne For Dummies is the goto guide for anyone looking to gain insight into the latest version of the software. It gets you up to speed on the key features of QuickBooks and small business accounting and makes managing finances a breeze. This book will help you learn all the skills you need to know, like how to invoice customers, pay vendors, manage cash and bank accounts, use activitybased costing, and write a business plan.Written by highly qualified CPA Stephen L. Nelson, this detailed reference combines eight minibooks into one complete resource. Small business finances can be complicated, but QuickBooks 2018 is a valuable tool for getting them right—and this guide makes it easier. Troubleshoot and protect your financial data Utilize Cloud storage and access your information from a smartphone Plan and set up a QuickBooks system Make sense of doubleentry bookkeeping Handle your financial and business management tasks more effectivelyQuickBooks 2018 AllinOne For Dummies is a helpful resource for getting started with QuickBooks 2018, and a reference guide that will provide insight and answers to experienced users as well.
Trang 1www.allitebooks.com
Trang 3QuickBooks® 2018 All-in-One For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Media and software compilation copyright © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017957454
ISBN: 978-1-119-39736-6
ISBN: 978-1-119-39737-3 (ebk); ISBN: 978-1-119-39735-9 (ebk)
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Trang 4Contents at a Glance
Introduction 1
Book 1: An Accounting Primer 5
CHAPTER 1: Principles of Accounting 7
CHAPTER 2: Double-Entry Bookkeeping 27
CHAPTER 3: Special Accounting Problems 47
Book 2: Getting Ready to Use QuickBooks 69
CHAPTER 1: Setting Up QuickBooks 71
CHAPTER 2: Loading the Master File Lists 91
CHAPTER 3: Fine-Tuning QuickBooks 115
Book 3: Bookkeeping Chores 149
CHAPTER 1: Invoicing Customers 151
CHAPTER 2: Paying Vendors 185
CHAPTER 3: Tracking Inventory and Items 205
CHAPTER 4: Managing Cash and Bank Accounts 237
CHAPTER 5: Paying Employees 269
Book 4: Accounting Chores 281
CHAPTER 1: For Accountants Only 283
CHAPTER 2: Preparing Financial Statements and Reports 299
CHAPTER 3: Preparing a Budget 323
CHAPTER 4: Using Activity-Based Costing 337
CHAPTER 5: Setting Up Project and Job Costing Systems 353
Book 5: Financial Management 365
CHAPTER 1: Ratio Analysis 367
CHAPTER 2: Economic Value Added Analysis 385
CHAPTER 3: Capital Budgeting in a Nutshell 399
Book 6: Business Plans 415
CHAPTER 1: Profit-Volume-Cost Analysis 417
CHAPTER 2: Creating a Business Plan Forecast 437
CHAPTER 3: Writing a Business Plan 475
www.allitebooks.com
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CHAPTER 1: Administering QuickBooks 491
CHAPTER 2: Protecting Your Data 509
CHAPTER 3: Troubleshooting 529
Book 8: Appendixes 535
APPENDIX A: A Crash Course in Excel 537
APPENDIX B: Government Web Resources for Businesses 553
APPENDIX C: Glossary of Accounting and Financial Terms 571
Index 599
www.allitebooks.com
Trang 6Table of Contents v
Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 1
About This Book 1
Foolish Assumptions 2
Icons Used in This Book .3
Beyond the Book .3
Where to Go from Here .3
BOOK 1: AN ACCOUNTING PRIMER 5
CHAPTER 1: Principles of Accounting 7
The Purpose of Accounting .7
The big picture .8
Managers, investors, and entrepreneurs 8
External creditors .9
Government agencies 9
Business form generation .10
Reviewing the Common Financial Statements .10
The income statement .10
Balance sheet 13
Statement of cash flows .17
Other accounting statements .20
Putting it all together .21
The Philosophy of Accounting .23
Revenue principle .23
Expense principle .23
Matching principle 24
Cost principle .24
Objectivity principle 24
Continuity assumption .25
Unit-of-measure assumption 25
Separate-entity assumption 26
A Few Words about Tax Accounting .26
CHAPTER 2: Double-Entry Bookkeeping 27
The Fiddle-Faddle Method of Accounting .28
How Double-Entry Bookkeeping Works 30
The accounting model .31
Talking mechanics .33
Almost a Real-Life Example .36
Recording rent expense .37
Recording wages expense .37
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Recording supplies expense .38
Recording sales revenue .38
Recording cost of goods sold 38
Recording the payoff of accounts payable .39
Recording the payoff of a loan .40
Calculating account balance .40
Using T-account analysis results .42
A Few Words about How QuickBooks Works .44
CHAPTER 3: Special Accounting Problems 47
Working with Accounts Receivable .48
Recording a sale 48
Recording a payment .48
Estimating bad-debt expense .49
Removing uncollectible accounts receivable 50
Recording Accounts Payable Transactions .51
Recording a bill .51
Paying a bill 52
Taking some other accounts payable pointers .52
Inventory Accounting .53
Dealing with obsolete inventory .54
Disposing of obsolete inventory .55
Dealing with inventory shrinkage .56
Accounting for Fixed Assets 57
Purchasing a fixed asset 57
Dealing with depreciation .58
Disposing of a fixed asset 60
Recognizing Liabilities 61
Borrowing money .61
Making a loan payment .62
Accruing liabilities .63
Closing Out Revenue and Expense Accounts .65
The traditional close .66
The QuickBooks close .67
One More Thing . .68
BOOK 2: GETTING READY TO USE QUICKBOOKS 69
CHAPTER 1: Setting Up QuickBooks 71
Planning Your New QuickBooks System .71
What accounting does .72
What accounting systems do 72
What QuickBooks does 72
And now for the bad news 73
Installing QuickBooks .74
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Dealing with the Presetup Jitters 75
Preparing for setup .76
Seeing what happens during setup .77
Running the QuickBooks Setup Wizard .77
Getting the big welcome 77
Supplying company information 79
Customizing QuickBooks .80
Setting your start date .81
Reviewing the suggested chart of accounts .82
Adding your information to the company file 83
Identifying the Starting Trial Balance .85
A simple example to start .86
A real-life example to finish .88
CHAPTER 2: Loading the Master File Lists 91
Setting Up the Chart of Accounts List 92
Setting Up the Item List .97
Working with the Price Level List .97
Using Sales Tax Codes .98
Setting Up a Payroll Item List 98
Setting Up Classes .99
Setting Up a Customer List 101
Setting Up the Vendor List .106
Setting Up a Fixed Assets List .109
Setting Up a Price Level List .110
Setting Up a Billing Rate Level List .111
Setting Up Your Employees .111
Setting Up an Other Names List .111
Setting Up the Profile Lists 112
CHAPTER 3: Fine-Tuning QuickBooks 115
Accessing the Preferences Settings .116
Setting the Accounting Preferences .118
Using account numbers .118
Setting general accounting options .119
Setting the Bills Preferences .121
Setting the Calendar Preferences .121
Setting the Checking Preferences .121
Changing the Desktop View .123
Setting Finance Charge Calculation Rules .126
Setting General Preferences .126
Controlling Integrated Applications .128
Controlling Inventory .129
Controlling How Jobs and Estimates Work .130
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Dealing with Multiple Currencies .132
Starting Integrated Payment Processing .132
Controlling How Payroll Works .133
Telling QuickBooks How Reminders Should Work .135
Specifying Reports & Graphs Preferences 136
Setting Sales & Customers Preferences 140
Specifying How Sales Are Taxed .141
Setting the Search Preferences .142
Setting the Send Forms Preferences .143
Fine-Tuning the Service Connection .144
Controlling Spell Checking .145
Controlling How 1099 Tax Reporting Works .146
Setting Time & Expenses Preferences .146
BOOK 3: BOOKKEEPING CHORES 149
CHAPTER 1: Invoicing Customers 151
Choosing an Invoice Form .151
Customizing an Invoice Form .152
Choosing a template to customize .152
Reviewing the Additional Customization options .152
Moving on to Basic Customization .157
Working with the Layout Designer tool .159
Working with the web-based Forms Customization tool 162
Invoicing a Customer .162
Billing for Time 168
Using a weekly time sheet .168
Timing single activities .169
Including billable time on an invoice .171
Printing Invoices .173
Emailing Invoices .173
Recording Sales Receipts .174
Recording Credit Memos .177
Receiving Customer Payments .179
Assessing Finance Charges .181
Setting up finance charge rules 181
Calculating finance charges .182
Using Odds and Ends on the Customers Menu .183
CHAPTER 2: Paying Vendors 185
Creating a Purchase Order 185
Creating a real purchase order .186
Using some purchase order tips and tricks 189
Recording the Receipt of Items .189
Simultaneously Recording the Receipt and the Bill .192
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Entering a Bill .194
If you haven’t previously recorded an item receipt .194
If you have previously recorded an item receipt .196
Paying Bills .198
Reviewing the Other Vendor Menu Commands .201
Vendor Center .202
Sales Tax menu commands .202
Inventory Activities menu commands .203
Print/E-file 1099s .204
Item List .204
CHAPTER 3: Tracking Inventory and Items 205
Looking at Your Item List .206
Using the Item Code column .206
Using the Item List window .207
Using inventory reports .208
Adding Items to the Item List 208
Adding an item: Basic steps .209
Adding a service item .210
Adding an inventory part .211
Adding a noninventory part 213
Adding an other-charge item 213
Adding a subtotal item .216
Adding a group item .217
Adding a discount item 217
Adding a payment item .219
Adding a sales tax item 219
Setting up a sales tax group 220
Adding custom fields to items .222
Editing Items 223
Adjusting Physical Counts and Inventory Values .224
Adjusting Prices and Price Levels .227
Using the Change Item Prices command 227
Using price levels 228
Enabling advanced pricing .230
Managing Inventory in a Manufacturing Firm 231
Handling manufactured inventory the simple way .231
Performing inventory accounting in QuickBooks .232
Managing multiple inventory locations .235
CHAPTER 4: Managing Cash and Bank Accounts 237
Writing Checks .238
Recording and printing a check 238
Customizing the check form .244
Making Bank Deposits .246
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Transferring Money between Bank Accounts .249
Working with the Register .251
Recording register transactions .251
Using Register window commands and buttons .254
Using Edit Menu Commands .258
Reconciling the Bank Account .262
Reviewing the Other Banking Commands 266
Order Checks & Envelopes command .266
Enter Credit Card Charges command 266
Bank Feeds command .268
Loan Manager .268
Other Names list .268
CHAPTER 5: Paying Employees 269
Setting Up Basic Payroll .269
Signing up for a payroll service .271
Setting up employees .271
Setting up year-to-date amounts .275
Checking your payroll setup data .276
Scheduling Payroll Runs .276
Paying Employees .276
Editing and Voiding Paychecks .278
Paying Payroll Liabilities .279
BOOK 4: ACCOUNTING CHORES 281
CHAPTER 1: For Accountants Only 283
Working with QuickBooks Journal Entries .283
Recording a journal entry 284
Reversing a journal entry .285
Editing journal entries 286
Updating Company Information .286
Working with Memorized Transactions .286
Reviewing the Accountant & Taxes Reports .287
Creating an Accountant’s Copy of the QuickBooks Data File .289
Creating an accountant’s copy 290
Using an accountant’s copy .294
Reusing an accountant’s copy .294
Exporting client changes .295
Importing accountant’s changes .295
Canceling accountant’s changes .297
Troubleshooting accountant’s copy transfers 297
Using the Client Data Review Commands .297
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CHAPTER 2: Preparing Financial Statements and Reports 299
Some Wise Words Up Front 299
Producing a Report .300
Working with the Report Window 301
Working with Report window buttons .301
Using the Report window boxes .308
Modifying a Report .311
Using the Display tab .311
Using the Filters tab .313
Using the Header/Footer tab 316
Formatting fonts and numbers .317
Processing Multiple Reports .319
A Few Words about Document Retention .320
CHAPTER 3: Preparing a Budget 323
Reviewing Common Budgeting Tactics .323
Top-line budgeting .324
Zero-based budgeting 324
Benchmarking .325
Putting it all together .326
Taking a Practical Approach to Budgeting 327
Using the Set Up Budgets Window .327
Creating a new budget .327
Working with an existing budget 329
Managing with a Budget 332
Some Wrap-Up Comments on Budgeting .334
CHAPTER 4: Using Activity-Based Costing 337
Reviewing Traditional Overhead Allocation 338
Understanding How ABC Works .340
The ABC product-line income statement 340
ABC in a small firm .344
Implementing a Simple ABC System 345
Seeing How QuickBooks Supports ABC .346
Turning On Class Tracking .347
Using Classes for ABC .348
Setting up your classes .348
Classifying revenue amounts 349
Classifying expense amounts .349
After-the-fact classifications 351
Producing ABC reports .352
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CHAPTER 5: Setting Up Project and Job Costing Systems 353
Setting Up a QuickBooks Job .353
Tracking Job or Project Costs .356
Job Cost Reporting 359
Using Job Estimates 360
Progress Billing .362
BOOK 5: FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT 365
CHAPTER 1: Ratio Analysis 367
Some Caveats about Ratio Analysis .368
Liquidity Ratios 369
Current ratio 369
Acid test ratio .370
Leverage Ratios .371
Debt ratio .371
Debt equity ratio .372
Times interest earned ratio .373
Fixed-charges coverage ratio 374
Activity Ratios 375
Inventory turnover ratio 376
Days of inventory ratio .377
Average collection period ratio .377
Fixed-asset turnover ratio .378
Total assets turnover ratio .379
Profitability Ratios .379
Gross margin percentage 380
Operating income/sales .380
Profit margin percentage .381
Return on assets .381
Return on equity .382
CHAPTER 2: Economic Value Added Analysis 385
Introducing the Logic of EVA .385
Seeing EVA in Action .386
An example of EVA .388
Another example of EVA 389
Reviewing Some Important Points about EVA 389
Using EVA When Your Business Has Debt .391
The first example of the modified EVA formula .391
Another EVA with debt example .393
Presenting Two Final Pointers .395
And Now, a Word to My Critics .396
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CHAPTER 3: Capital Budgeting in a Nutshell 399
Introducing the Theory of Capital Budgeting .399
The big thing is the return .400
One little thing is maturity .400
Another little thing is risk .401
The bottom line .401
Calculating the Rate of Return on Capital .402
Calculating the investment amount .403
Estimating the net cash flows .403
Calculating the return .407
Measuring Liquidity 412
Thinking about Risk 412
What Does All of This Have to Do with QuickBooks? .414
BOOK 6: BUSINESS PLANS 415
CHAPTER 1: Profit-Volume-Cost Analysis 417
Seeing How Profit-Volume-Cost Analysis Works 418
Calculating Break-Even Points .420
Using Real QuickBooks Data for Profit-Volume-Cost Analysis .422
Sales revenue 422
Gross margin percentage 422
Fixed costs .424
Recognizing the Downside of the Profit-Volume-Cost Model 424
Using the Profit-Volume-Cost Analysis Workbook .426
Collecting your inputs .426
Understanding the break-even analysis 430
Understanding the profit-volume-cost forecast .431
Looking at the profit-volume-cost charts 433
CHAPTER 2: Creating a Business Plan Forecast 437
Reviewing Financial Statements and Ratios .438
Using the Business Plan Workbook .439
Understanding the Workbook Calculations 446
Forecasting inputs .446
Balance Sheet 446
Common Size Balance Sheet .454
Income Statement .455
Common Size Income Statement .459
Cash Flow Statement .460
Financial Ratios Table .466
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Customizing the Starter Workbook .472
Changing the number of periods .472
Performing ratio analysis on existing financial statements .472
Calculating taxes for a current net loss before taxes 473
Combining this workbook with other workbooks .473
CHAPTER 3: Writing a Business Plan 475
What the Term “Business Plan” Means .475
A Few Words about Strategic Plans .476
Cost strategies .476
Differentiated products and services strategies 477
Focus strategies .477
Look, Ma: No Strategy 478
Two comments about tactics 479
Six final strategy pointers 479
A White-Paper Business Plan 480
A New-Venture Plan .483
Is the new venture’s product or service feasible? 483
Does the market want the product or service? 484
Can the product or service be profitably sold? .485
Is the return on the venture adequate for prospective investors? .485
Can existing management run the business? .486
Some final thoughts .487
BOOK 7: CARE AND MAINTENANCE 489
CHAPTER 1: Administering QuickBooks 491
Keeping Your Data Confidential .491
Using Windows security .492
Using QuickBooks security 492
Using QuickBooks in a Multiuser Environment 493
Setting up additional QuickBooks users .494
Changing user rights in Enterprise Solutions .501
Changing user rights in QuickBooks Pro and Premier 503
Using Audit Trails 503
Producing an Audit Trail report 504
Enabling Simultaneous Multiuser Access .504
Maintaining Good Accounting Controls .505
CHAPTER 2: Protecting Your Data 509
Backing Up the QuickBooks Data File 509
Backing-up basics .510
What about online backup? .514
Some backup tactics .515
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Restoring a QuickBooks Data File .515
Condensing the QuickBooks Company Files 520
Cleanup basics .521
Some cleanup and archiving strategies .526
CHAPTER 3: Troubleshooting 529
Using the QuickBooks Help File and This Book 529
Browsing Intuit’s Product-Support Website 531
Checking Another Vendor’s Product-Support Website .533
Tapping into Intuit’s Online and Expert Communities 533
When All Else Fails . 534
BOOK 8: APPENDIXES 535
APPENDIX A: A Crash Course in Excel 537
Starting Excel .537
Stopping Excel .538
Explaining Excel’s Workbooks .538
Putting Text, Numbers, and Formulas in Cells .539
Writing Formulas .540
Scrolling through Big Workbooks .541
Copying and Cutting Cell Contents .542
Copying cell contents .542
Moving cell contents .543
Moving and copying formulas .543
Formatting Cell Contents .544
Recognizing That Functions Are Simply Formulas .546
Saving and Opening Workbooks 549
Saving a workbook .549
Opening a workbook 550
Printing Excel Workbooks 551
One Other Thing to Know .552
APPENDIX B: Government Web Resources for Businesses 553
Bureau of Economic Analysis 553
Finding information at the BEA website 553
Downloading a BEA publication .554
Uncompressing a BEA publication .555
Using a BEA publication .556
Bureau of Labor Statistics .556
Finding information at the BLS website .557
Using BLS information .557
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Census Bureau 560
Finding information at the Census Bureau website 561
Using the Census Bureau’s publications .562
Using the Census Bureau search engine .562
Using the Census Bureau Subjects index 563
Securities and Exchange Commission .563
Finding information through EDGAR .564
Searching the EDGAR database 564
Federal Reserve .565
Finding information at the Federal Reserve website .566
Using the Federal Reserve website’s information 567
Government Printing Office 567
Information available at the GPO website 568
Searching the GPO database .568
Internal Revenue Service .569
APPENDIX C: Glossary of Accounting and Financial Terms 571
INDEX 599
Trang 18Introduction 1
Introduction
Few people read introductions to reference books, so I’ll make this very brief
I just want to tell you which versions of QuickBooks this book works for, what’s in the reference, what it assumes about your existing skills, and what conventions I use
About This Book
The desktop version of QuickBooks comes in several flavors, including QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions This reference talks about QuickBooks 18 Enterprise Solutions, which is a superset of QuickBooks
2018 Premier and QuickBooks 2018 Pro If you’re using QuickBooks Self-Employed
or QuickBooks Online, you shouldn’t use this book Sorry
On the other hand, even though this book is written for QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, if you’re using QuickBooks Premier or QuickBooks Pro, don’t worry You’re just fine with this book And don’t freak out if you’re using some version
of QuickBooks that’s very similar to QuickBooks 2018, such as QuickBooks 2017 or QuickBooks 2019 Although this reference is about QuickBooks 2018, it also works just fine for the 2016, 2017, and probably 2019 versions of QuickBooks because QuickBooks is a very mature product at this point The changes from one year to the next are modest This means that if you’re using QuickBooks 2017, stuff may look a little different if you closely compare the images in this book with what you see on your screen, but the information in this reference will still apply to your situation.Note, too, that specialty versions of QuickBooks, such as QuickBooks Accountant’s Edition and QuickBooks Contractor, also work almost identically to QuickBooks Premier
If you use QuickBooks Pro and see some whistle or bell that you really want to use but that isn’t available in your version of QuickBooks, you’ll know that you should upgrade to the Premier version or Enterprise Solutions version of QuickBooks.The bottom line? Yes, QuickBooks comes in several flavors Yes, Intuit publishes new editions of its QuickBooks products every year But you can use this book for any recent version of QuickBooks Pro, Premier, or Enterprise Solutions
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To make the best use of your time and energy, you should know about the tions I use in this book:
conven-» When I want you to type something such as Jennifer, it’s in bold letters.
» By the way, except for passwords, you don’t have to worry about the case of the stuff you type in QuickBooks If I tell you to type Jennifer, you can type
JENNIFER Or you can follow poet e e cummings’s lead and type jennifer.
» Whenever I tell you to choose a command from a menu, I say something like Choose Lists ➪ Items, which simply means to first choose the Lists menu and then choose Items The ➪ separates one part of the command from the next part
» You can choose menus and commands and select dialog-box elements with the mouse Just click the thing that you want to select
» While I’m on the subject of conventions, let me also mention something about QuickBooks conventions, because it turns out that there’s really no good place
to point this out QuickBooks doesn’t use document windows the same way that other Windows programs do Instead, it locks the active window into place and then displays a list of windows in its Navigator pane, which is like another little window To move to a listed window, you click it
You can tell QuickBooks to use windows like every other program does, however,
by choosing View ➪ Multiple Windows You can even remove the Navigator pane
by choosing View ➪ Open Window List
Foolish Assumptions
I’m making only three assumptions about your QuickBooks and accounting skills:
» You have a PC with Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (I took pictures of the QuickBooks windows and dialog boxes in Windows 10, in case you’re interested.)
» You know a little bit about how to work with your computer
» You have, or will buy, a copy of QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, or QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions for each computer on which you want to run the program
In other words, I don’t assume that you’re a computer genius or an MBA, or that you’re superexperienced in the arcane rules of accounting I assume that Quick-Books and accounting are new subjects to you But I also assume that you want to understand the subjects because you need to do so for your job or your business
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Icons Used in This Book
Like many computer books, this book uses icons, or little pictures, to flag things that don’t quite fit into the flow of things
The Warning icon tells you to watch out! It marks important information that may save you headaches when using QuickBooks 2018
Remember icons mark the information that’s especially important to know To siphon off the most important information in each chapter, just skim these icons
The Tip icon marks tips (duh!) and shortcuts that you can use to make QuickBooks easier
The Technical Stuff icon marks information of a highly technical nature that you normally can skip
Beyond the Book
QuickBooks 2018 All-in-One For Dummies includes some extra content that you bought
with your book but didn’t actually get inside the book Okay, I know that sounds bad
at first blush But don’t worry This extra, premium stuff is available online:
» The Cheat Sheet for this book is athttp://www.dummies.com
In the Search field, type QuickBooks 2018 All-in-One For Dummies Cheat Sheet to find the Cheat sheet for this book.
» Updates to this book, if there are any, are also at http://www.dummies.com Search for the book’s title to find the associated updates
Where to Go from Here
This reference combines eight short books, including a minibook about ing, one about setting up the QuickBooks system, one for bookkeepers using QuickBooks, one for accountants and managers using QuickBooks, a minibook
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about small-business financial management, a minibook about business ning, a minibook about taking care of a QuickBooks accounting system, and a minibook of appendixes of further useful information
plan-I’m not going to go into more detail here about what’s available in the book If you have a specific question about what’s covered or where some topic is covered, refer to the table of contents in the front of this reference Also remember that the book provides an index to help you find just the pages that have the information you need
While I’m on the subject of what’s in this book and how to find information, let
me make four tangential points:
» You’ll never read this book from cover to cover unless you’re someone who has an obsessive-compulsive personality (like me) and many hours to devote
to reading But that’s okay This reference isn’t meant to be read from cover to cover like some Val McDermid page-turner Instead, chapters within the eight minibooks are organized into largely self-contained descriptions of how you
do the things that you need to do You just read the paragraph, page, or chapter that provides the information you want
» I haven’t discussed in any detail how to use the QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions features for business planning The wizard-based approach that QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions provide for business planning is not, in my humble opinion, the right way to do this Instead, I discuss in detail alternative, superior approaches to business planning and budgeting (using spreadsheets) in Book 6 (Just so you know: The approach I describe and recommend here is the same one that any business school teaches its students.)
» At a few points in the book, you’ll find me saying things like “Well, I really don’t think you should use this part of the product.” I just want to explain here, up front, where I’m coming from on this First, know that I think QuickBooks is an outstanding product, but not every feature and every command is good I’ve already mentioned that the new business planning tools aren’t ones that I can recommend And payroll, very frankly, is another pain-in-the-butt feature that most businesses should avoid (I do briefly discuss payroll in Book 3,
Chapter 5.) So if I think that a particular feature is one that you shouldn’t use, I don’t take up page space (or much page space) describing the feature I’d rather use that space to describe other stuff that I believe is going to be valuable to you and other readers
» I should also mention one final thing: Accounting software programs require you to do a certain amount of preparation before you can use them to get real work done If you haven’t started to use QuickBooks yet, I recommend that you skim Book 1 and then read Book 2 to find out what you need to do first
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Trang 23Contents at a Glance
CHAPTER 1: Principles of Accounting 7
The Purpose of Accounting 7Reviewing the Common Financial Statements 10The Philosophy of Accounting 23
A Few Words about Tax Accounting 26
CHAPTER 2: Double-Entry Bookkeeping 27
The Fiddle-Faddle Method of Accounting 28How Double-Entry Bookkeeping Works 30Almost a Real-Life Example 36
A Few Words about How QuickBooks Works 44
CHAPTER 3: Special Accounting Problems 47
Working with Accounts Receivable 48Recording Accounts Payable Transactions 51Inventory Accounting 53Accounting for Fixed Assets 57Recognizing Liabilities 61Closing Out Revenue and Expense Accounts 65One More Thing . 68
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Principles of Accounting
Any discussion of how to use QuickBooks to better manage your business
begins with a discussion of the basics of accounting For this reason, in this chapter and the next two, I attempt to provide the same information that you would receive in an introductory college accounting course I tailor the entire discussion, of course, to QuickBooks and the small-business environment What you’ll read about here and in the next chapters of this book pretty much describes how accounting works in a small-business setting using QuickBooks
If you’ve had some experience with accounting, if you know how to read an income statement and balance sheet, or if you know how to construct a journal entry, you don’t need to read this chapter or the next But if you’re new to accounting and busi-ness bookkeeping, take the time to read this chapter carefully I start the chapter
by giving you a high-level overview of the purpose of accounting Then I review the common financial statements that any accounting system worth its salt produces
I also discuss some of the important principles of accounting and the philosophy
of accounting Finally, I talk a little bit about income tax law and tax accounting
The Purpose of Accounting
In the movie Creator, Peter O’Toole plays an eccentric professor At one point,
O’Toole’s character attempts to talk a young student into working as an unpaid
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research assistant When the student protests, noting that he needs 15 credit hours, O’Toole creates a special 15-credit independent-study course named
“Introduction to the Big Picture.” In the next section, I describe the “big picture”
of accounting At its core, accounting makes perfect, logical sense
The big picture
The most important thing to understand about accounting is that it provides
finan-cial information to stakeholders Stakeholders are the people who do business with or
interact with a firm; they include managers, employees, investors, banks, vendors, government authorities, and agencies that may tax a firm Stakeholders and their information requirements deserve a bit more discussion Why? Because the infor-mation needs of these stakeholders determine what an accounting system must do
Managers, investors, and entrepreneurs
The first category of stakeholders includes the firm’s managers, investors, and entrepreneurs This group needs financial information to determine whether a business is making money This group also wants any information that gives insight into whether a business is growing or contracting and how healthy or sick
it is To fulfill its obligations and duties, this group often needs detailed tion A manager or entrepreneur may want to know which customers are particu-larly profitable — or unprofitable An active investor may want to know which product lines are growing or contracting
informa-A related set of information requirements concerns asset and liability record
keeping An asset is something that the firm owns, such as cash, inventory, or equipment A liability is some debt or obligation that the firm owes, such as bank
loans and accounts payable
Obviously, someone at a firm — perhaps a manager, bookkeeper, or accountant — needs to have very detailed records of the amount of cash that the firm has in its bank accounts, the inventory that the firm has in its warehouse or on its shelves, and the equipment that the firm owns and uses in its operations
If you look over the preceding two or three paragraphs, nothing I’ve said is ticularly surprising It makes sense, right? Someone who works in a business, manages a business, or actively invests in a business needs good general informa-tion about the financial affairs of the firm and, in many cases, very detailed infor-mation about important assets (such as cash) and liabilities (such as bank loans)
Trang 26What information do lenders want? Lenders want to know that a business is itable and enjoys a positive cash flow Profits and positive cash flows allow a busi-ness to easily repay debt A bank or other lender also wants to see assets that could
prof-be liquidated, in a worst-case scenario, to pay a loan — and other debts that may represent a claim on the firm’s assets
Vendors also typically require financial information from a firm A vendor often lends money to a firm by extending trade credit What’s noteworthy about this
is that vendors sometimes require special accounting One of the categories of vendors that a company such as John Wiley & Sons, Inc., deals with is authors To pay an author the royalty that he or she is entitled to, Wiley puts in a fair amount
of work to calculate royalty-per-unit amounts and then reports and remits these amounts to authors
Other firms sometimes have similar financial reporting requirements for dors Franchisees (such as the man or woman who owns and operates the local McDonald’s) pay a franchise fee based on revenue Retailers may perform special accounting and reporting to enjoy rebates and incentives from the manufacturers
ven-of the products that they sell
Government agencies
Predictable stakeholders that require financial information from a business also include the federal and state government agencies with jurisdiction over the firm Every business in the United States needs to report on its revenue, expenses, and profits so that the firm can correctly calculate income tax due to the federal gov-ernment (and often the state government too) and then pay that tax
Firms with employees must also report to the federal and state governments on wages paid to those employees and pay payroll taxes based on metrics, such as number of employees, wages paid to employees, and unemployment benefits claimed by past employees
Providing this sort of financial information to government agencies represents a key duty of a firm’s accounting system
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Business form generation
In addition to the financial reporting described in the preceding paragraphs, accounting systems typically perform a key task for businesses: producing busi-ness forms An accounting system almost always produces the checks needed to pay vendors, for example In addition, an accounting system prepares the invoices and payroll checks More sophisticated accounting systems, such as those used
by large firms, prepare many other business forms, including purchase orders, monthly customer statements, credit memos to customers, sales receipts, and so forth
Every accounting function that I’ve described so far is performed ably by each
of the versions of QuickBooks: QuickBooks Simple Start, QuickBooks Pro, Books Premier, and QuickBooks Enterprise
Quick-Reviewing the Common
Financial Statements
With the background information just provided, I’m ready to talk about some of the common financial statements or accounting reports that an accounting sys-tem like QuickBooks produces If you understand which reports you want your accounting system to produce, you should find it much easier to collect the raw data necessary to prepare these reports
In the following sections, I describe the three principal financial statements: the income statement, the balance sheet, and the statement of cash flows I also briefly describe a fourth, catch-all category: accounting reports
Don’t worry — I go through this material slowly You need to understand what financial statements your accounting systems are supposed to provide and what data these financial statements supply
The income statement
Perhaps the most important financial statement that an accounting system duces is the income statement The income statement is also known as a profit and loss statement An income statement summarizes a firm’s revenues and expenses
pro-for a particular period of time Revenue represents amounts that a business earns
by providing goods and services to its customers Expenses represent amounts that
a firm spends providing those goods and services If a business can provide goods
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CHAPTER 1 Principles of Accounting 11
or services to customers for revenue that exceeds its expenses, the firm earns a profit If expenses exceed revenue, obviously, the firm suffers a loss
To show you how this all works — and it’s really pretty simple — take a look at Tables 1-1 and 1-2 Table 1-1 summarizes the sales that an imaginary business enjoys Table 1-2 summarizes the expenses that the same business incurs for the same period These two tables provide all the information necessary to construct
an income statement
Using the information from Tables 1-1 and 1-2, you can construct the simple income statement shown in Table 1-3 Understanding the details of an income statement is key to your understanding of how accounting works and what accounting tries to do Therefore, I want to go into some detail discussing this income statement
TABLE 1-1 A Sales Journal
TABLE 1-2 An Expenses Journal
Purchases of dogs and buns $3,000
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The first thing to note about the income statement shown in Table 1-3 is the sales revenue figure of $13,000 This figure shows the sales generated for a particular period of time The $13,000 figure shown in Table 1-3 comes directly from the sales journal shown in Table 1-1
One important thing to recognize about accounting for sales revenue is that enue gets counted when goods or services are provided, not when a customer pays for the goods or services If you look at the list of sales shown in Table 1-1, for example, Joe (the first customer listed) may have paid $1,000 in cash, but Bob, Frank, and Abdul (the second, third, and fourth customers) may have paid for their purchases with a credit card Yoshio, Marie, Jeremy, and Chang (the fifth through eighth customers listed) may not have even paid for their purchases at the time the goods or services were provided These customers may have simply promised to pay for the purchases at some later date The timing of payment for goods or services doesn’t matter, however Accountants have figured out that you count revenue when goods or services are provided Information about when cus-tomers pay for those goods or services, if you want that information, can come from lists of customer payments
rev-Cost of goods sold and gross margins are two other values that you commonly see in
income statements Before I discuss cost of goods sold and gross margins, ever, let me add a little more detail to this example Suppose that the financial information in Tables 1-1, 1-2, and 1-3 shows the financial results from your busi-ness: the hot dog stand that you operate for one day at the major sporting event in the city where you live Table 1-1 describes sales to hungry customers Table 1-2 summarizes the one-day expenses of operating your super-duper hot dog stand
how-In this case, the actual items that you sell — hot dogs and buns — are shown separately in the income statement as cost of goods sold By separately showing
TABLE 1-3 Simple Income Statement
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CHAPTER 1 Principles of Accounting 13
the cost of the goods sold, the income statement can show what is called a gross
margin The gross margin is the amount of revenue left over after paying for the
cost of goods In Table 1-3, the cost of goods sold equals $3,000 for purchases
of dogs and buns The difference between the $13,000 of sales revenue and the
$3,000 of cost of goods sold equals $10,000, which is the gross margin
Knowing how to calculate gross margin allows you to estimate firm break-even points and to perform profit, volume, and cost analyses All these techniques are extremely useful for thinking about the financial affairs of your business In fact, Book 6, Chapter 1 describes how you can perform these analyses
The operating expenses portion of the simple income statement shown in Table 1-3
repeats the other information listed in the expenses journal The $1,000 of rent, the $4,000 of wages, and the $1,000 of supplies get totaled These operating expenses are then subtracted from the gross
Do you see, then, what an income statement does? An income statement reports
on the revenue that a firm has generated It shows the cost of goods sold and culates the gross margin It identifies and shows operating expenses, and finally shows the profits of the business
cal-One other important point: Income statements summarize revenue, expenses, and profits for a particular period Some managers and entrepreneurs, for exam-ple, may want to prepare income statements on a daily basis Public companies are required to prepare income statements on a quarterly and annual basis And taxing authorities, such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), require tax return preparation both quarterly and annually
Technically speaking, the quarterly statements required by the IRS don’t need
to report revenue The IRS requires quarterly statements only of wages paid to employees Only the annual income statements required by the IRS report both revenue and expenses These income statements are produced to prepare an annual income tax return
Balance sheet
The second most important financial statement that an accounting system
pro-duces is a balance sheet A balance sheet reports on a business’s assets, liabilities,
and owner contributions of capital at a particular point in time:
» The assets shown in a balance sheet are those items that are owned by the
business, which have value and for which money was paid
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» The liabilities shown in a balance sheet are those amounts that a business
owes to other people, businesses, and government agencies
» The owner contributions of capital are the amounts that owners, partners, or
shareholders have paid into the business in the form of investment or have reinvested in the business by leaving profits inside the company
As long as you understand what assets and liabilities are, a balance sheet is easy to understand and interpret Table 1-4, for example, shows a simple balance sheet Pretend that this balance sheet shows the condition of the hot dog stand at the beginning of the day, before any hot dogs have been sold The first portion of the balance sheet shows and totals the two assets of the hot-dog-stand business: the $1,000 cash in the cash register in a box under the counter and the $3,000 worth of hot dogs and buns that you’ve purchased to sell during the day
Balance sheets can use several other categories to report assets: accounts receivable (amounts that customers owe), investments, fixtures, equipment, and long-term investments In the case of a small owner-operated business, not all these asset categories show up But if you look at the balance sheet of a very large business — say, one of the 100 largest businesses in the United States — you see these other categories
The liabilities section of the balance sheet shows the amounts that the firm owes
to other people and businesses The balance sheet in Table 1-4 shows $2,000 of accounts payable and a $1,000 loan payable Presumably, the $2,000 of accounts payable is the money that you owe to the vendors who supplied your hot dogs and
TABLE 1-4 A Simple Balance Sheet
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CHAPTER 1 Principles of Accounting 15
buns The $1,000 loan payable represents some loan you’ve taken out — perhaps from some well-meaning and naive relative
The owner’s equity section shows the amount that the owner, the partners,
or shareholders have contributed to the business in the form of original funds invested or profits reinvested One important point about the balance sheet shown
in Table 1-4: This balance sheet shows how owner’s equity looks when the ness is a sole proprietorship In the case of a sole proprietor, only one line is reported in the owner’s equity section of the balance sheet This line combines all contributions made by the proprietor — both amounts originally invested and amounts reinvested
busi-I talk a bit more about owner’s equity accounting later in this chapter because the owner’s equity sections look different for partnerships and corporations Before
I get into that, however, let me make two important observations about the ance sheet shown in Table 1-4:
bal-» A balance sheet needs to balance This means that the total assets must
equal the total liabilities and owner’s equity In the balance sheet shown in
Table 1-4, for example, total assets show as $4,000 Total liabilities and
owner’s equity also show as $4,000 This equality is no coincidence If an
accounting system works right, and the accountants and bookkeepers
entering information into this system do their jobs right, the balance
sheet balances
» A balance sheet provides a snapshot of a business’s financial condition
at a particular point in time I mention in the introductory remarks related
to Table 1-4 that the balance sheet in this table shows the financial condition
of the hot-dog-stand business immediately before the day’s business activities
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Table 1-5 shows how the owner’s equity section of a balance sheet looks for a partnership In Table 1-5, I show how the owner’s equity section of the hot-dog- stand business appears if, instead of having a sole proprietor named S. Nelson running the stand, the business is actually owned and operated by three partners named Tom, Dick, and Harry In this case, the partners’ equity section shows the amounts originally invested and any amounts reinvested by the partners As is the case with sole proprietorships, each partner’s contributions and reinvested profits appear on a single line
Go ahead and take a look at Table 1-6 It shows how the owner’s equity section looks for a corporation
This next part is a little bit weird For a corporation, the amounts that appear in the owner’s equity or shareholders’ equity section actually fall into two major
categories: retained earnings and contributed capital Retained earnings represent profits that the shareholders have left in the business Contributed capital is the
money originally contributed by the shareholders to the corporation
The retained-earnings thing makes sense, right? That’s just the money — the profits — that investors have reinvested in the business
TABLE 1-5 Owner’s Equity for a Partnership
Partners’ equity
Total partner capital $1,000
TABLE 1-6 Owner’s Equity for a Corporation
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CHAPTER 1 Principles of Accounting 17
The contributed-capital thing is more complicated Here’s how it works If you buy a share of stock in some new corporation — for, say, $5 — typically, some portion of that price per share is for par value Now, don’t ask me to justify par value It stems from business practices that were common a century or more ago Just trust that typically, if you pay some amount — again, say $5 — for a share, some portion of the amount that you pay — maybe 10 cents a share or $1 a share — is for par value
In the owner’s equity section of a corporation’s balance sheet, capital that’s tributed by original investors is broken down into the amounts paid for this mys-terious par value and the amounts paid in excess of this par value In Table 1-6, you can see that $100 of shareholders’ equity or owner’s equity represents amounts paid for par value Another $400 of the amounts contributed by the original investors represents amounts paid in excess of par value The total share-holders’ equity, or total corporate owner’s equity, equals the sum of the capital stock par value, the contributed capital and excess of par value, and any retained earnings So in Table 1-6, the total shareholders’ equity equals $1,000
con-Statement of cash flows
Now I come to the one tricky financial statement: the statement of cash flows
Before I begin, I have one comment to make about the statement of cash flows: As
an accountant, I’ve worked with many bright managers and businesspeople No matter how much hand-holding and explanation I (or other accountants) provide, some of these smart people never quite get some of the numbers on the statement
of cash flows In fact, many of the students who major in accounting never (in my opinion, at least) quite understand how a statement of cash flows really works
For this reason, don’t spend too much time spinning your wheels on this
state-ment or trying to understand what it does QuickBooks does supply a statestate-ment of cash flows, but you don’t need to use this statement In fact, QuickBooks produces cash basis income statements, which give you almost the same information — and in a format that’s easier to understand
I think the best way to explain what a statement of cash flows does is to ask you to look again at the balance sheet shown in Table 1-4 earlier in this chapter This table
is the balance sheet for the imaginary hot dog stand at the beginning of the day
Now take a look at Table 1-7, which shows the balance sheet at the end of the day, after operations for the hot dog stand have ended Notice that at the start of the day (see Table 1-4), cash equals $1,000, and at the end of the day (see Table 1-7), cash equals $5,000 The statement of cash flows explains why cash changes from the one number to the other number over a period of time In other words, a statement
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of cash flows explains how cash goes from $1,000 at the start of the day to $5,000
at the end of the day
Table 1-8, not coincidentally, shows a statement of cash flows that explains how cash flowed for your imaginary hot-dog-stand business If you’re reading this book, presumably you need to understand this statement I start at the bottom of the statement and work up
TABLE 1-7 Another Simple Balance Sheet
Total liabilities and owner’s equity $5,000
TABLE 1-8 A Simple Statement of Cash Flows
Operating activities
Net cash provided by operating activities $5,000
Financing activities
Net cash provided (used) by financing activities (1,000)
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CHAPTER 1 Principles of Accounting 19
By convention, accountants show negative numbers inside parentheses These parentheses flag negative values more clearly than a simple minus sign can
The last three lines of the statement of cash flows are all easily understandable The cash balance at the end of the period, $5,000, shows what cash the business holds at the end of the day The cash balance at the start of the period, $1,000, shows the cash that the business holds at the beginning of the day Both the cash balance at the start of the period and the cash balance at the end of the period tie
to the cash balance values reported in the two balance sheets (Look at Table 1-4 and Table 1-7 to corroborate this assertion.) Clearly, if you start the period with
$1,000 and end the period with $5,000, cash has increased by $4,000 That’s an arithmetical certainty No question there, right?
The financing activities of the statement of cash flows show how firm borrowing and firm debt repayment affect the firm cash flow If the hot-dog-stand business uses its profits to repay the $1,000 loan payable — and in this case, this is what happened — this $1,000 cash outflow shows up in the financing activities portion
of the statement of cash flows as a negative $1,000
The top portion of the statement of cash flows is often the trickiest to understand Note, however, that I’ve talked about everything else in this statement So with
a strong push, you can fight your way through to understanding what’s going
on here
The operating activities portion of the statement of cash flows essentially shows the cash that comes from the profit If you look at Table 1-8, for example, you see that the first line in the operating activities portion of the statement of cash flows is net income of $4,000 This is the net income amount reported on the income statement for the period The net income or operating profit reported in the business’s income statement, however, isn’t necessarily the same thing as cash income or cash profit A variety of factors must be adjusted to convert this net income amount to what’s essentially a cash amount of operating profit
In the case of the hot-dog-stand business, if you use some of the profits to pay off all the accounts payable, this payoff uses up some of your cash profit This is exactly what Table 1-8 shows You can see that the decrease in the accounts pay-able from $2,000 to $0 over the day required, quite logically, $2,000 of the net income Another way to think about this is that essentially, you used up $2,000 of your cash profits to pay off accounts payable Remember that the accounts payable
is the amount that you owed your vendors for hot dogs and buns
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Another adjustment is required for the decrease in inventory The decrease in inventory from the start of the period to the end of the period produces cash Basically, you’re liquidating inventory Another way to think about this is that although this inventory — the hot dogs and buns, in this example — shows up as
an expense for the day’s income statement, it isn’t purchased during the day It doesn’t consume cash during the day; it was purchased at some point in the past.When you combine the net income, the accounts payable adjustment, and the inventory adjustment, you get the net cash provided by the operating activities
In Table 1-8, these three amounts combine for $5,000 of cash provided by the operations
After you understand the details of the financing and operating activities areas
of the statement of cash flows, the statement makes sense Net cash provided by the operating activities equals $5,000 Financing activities reduce cash by $1,000 This means that cash actually increased over the period by $4,000, which explains why cash starts the period at $1,000 and ends the period at $5,000
Other accounting statements
You can probably come up with examples of several other popular or useful accounting reports Not surprisingly, a good accounting system such as Quick-Books produces most of these reports One very common report or financial state-ment, for example, is a list of the amounts that your customers owe you It’s a good idea to prepare and review such reports on a regular basis to make sure that you don’t have customers turning into collection problems
Table 1-9 shows how the simplest sort of accounts receivable report may look Each customer is named along with the amount owed
Table 1-10 shows another common accounting report: an inventory report that the hot dog stand may have at the start of the day An inventory report like the one shown in Table 1-10 would probably name the various items held for resale, the quantity held, and the amount or value of the inventory item A report such as this is useful to make sure that you have the appropriate quantities of inventory in stock (Think of how useful such a report would be if you really were planning to sell thousands of hot dogs at major sporting events in your hometown.)
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CHAPTER 1 Principles of Accounting 21
Putting it all together
By now, you should understand what an accounting system does When you boil everything down to its essence, it’s straightforward, isn’t it? Really, an account-ing system just provides you the financial information that you need to run your business
Let me add a tangential but important point: QuickBooks supplies all this ing information For the most part, preparing these sorts of financial statements
account-in QuickBooks is pretty darn easy But first, you’ll faccount-ind it helpful to know a bit more about accounting and bookkeeping I go over that information in the coming chapters Also, note that the big-picture stuff covered in this chapter is the most important knowledge that you need If you understand the ideas described in this chapter, the battle is more than half won
TABLE 1-9 An Accounts Receivable Report
TABLE 1-10 An Inventory Report at Start of Day
Item Quantity Amount
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CURIOUS ABOUT DIFFERENT BUSINESS FORMS?
Are you curious about the differences among a sole proprietorship, a partnership, and
a corporation? A sole proprietorship is formed automatically in most states and in most
industries when an individual decides to go into business In many jurisdictions, the sole proprietor needs to acquire or apply for a business license from the state or local city government Other than clearing that modest hurdle, sole proprietorship requires no special prerequisites
A partnership is formed automatically when two or more people enter into a joint
busi-ness or investment activity for the purpose of making a profit As is the case with a sole proprietorship, partnerships typically need to acquire a business license from the state and perhaps the federal government Partnership formation doesn’t necessarily require any additional paperwork or legal maneuvering If you do enter into a partnership, however, most attorneys (probably all attorneys) will tell you that you do so at a certain amount of risk if you don’t have an attorney draw up a partnership agreement that out-lines the duties, rights, and responsibilities of the partners Also be aware that you can actually form a partnership simply by collaborating in business with someone The law books are full of stories of people who inadvertently created partnerships merely by col-laborating on some project, sharing office space, or working together on some activity
By comparison, most states allow several other business forms, including corporations,
limited liability companies, and limited liability partnerships These other business forms
sometimes require considerably more work to set up, sometimes the assistance of
a good attorney or accountant, and sometimes payment of several hundred — and possibly several thousand — dollars in legal and licensing fees The unique feature of most of these other business forms is that the corporation, limited liability company, or limited liability partnership becomes a separate legal entity In many cases, this sepa-rate legal entity protects investors from creditors that have a claim on the assets of the business By comparison, in a sole proprietorship or a partnership, the sole proprietor and the partners are liable for the debts and obligations of the proprietorship or the partnership
If you have questions about the correct business form in which to operate, talk with a good local attorney or accountant He or she can assist you in choosing the appropriate business form and in considering both the legal and tax aspects of choosing a particular form As a general rule, more sophisticated business forms such as corporations, lim-ited liability companies, and limited liability partnerships deliver significant legal and tax benefits to investors and managers Unfortunately, these more sophisticated business forms also require considerably more legal and accounting fiddle-faddling
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CHAPTER 1 Principles of Accounting 23
The Philosophy of Accounting
Maybe the phrase philosophy of accounting is too strong, but accounting does rest
on a rather small set of fundamental assumptions and principles People often
refer to these fundamentals as generally accepted accounting principles.
I want to quickly summarize what these principles are I find — and I bet you’ll find the same thing — that understanding the principles provides context and makes accounting practices more understandable With this in mind, let me go through the half dozen or so key accounting principles and assumptions
These basic accounting principles underlie business accounting These principles and assumptions are implicit in all the discussions in this entire book It’s no exaggeration to say that they permeate almost everything related to business accounting
Revenue principle
The revenue principle, also known as the realization principle, states that revenue is
earned when the sale is made Typically, the sale is made when goods or services are provided A key component of the revenue principle, when it comes to the sale
of goods, is that revenue is earned when legal ownership of the goods passes from seller to buyer
Note that revenue isn’t earned when you collect cash for something It turns out, perhaps counterintuitively, that counting revenue when cash is collected doesn’t give the business owner a good idea of what sales really are Some customers may pay deposits early, before actually receiving the goods or services Often, customers want to use trade credit, paying a firm at some point in the future for goods or services Because cash flows can fluctuate wildly — even something like
a delay in the mail can affect cash flow — you don’t want to use cash collection from customers as a measure of sales Besides, you can easily track cash collec-tions from customers So why not have the extra information about when sales actually occur?
Expense principle
The expense principle states that an expense occurs when the business uses goods
or receives services In other words, the expense principle is the flip side of the revenue principle As is the case with the revenue principle, if you receive some goods, simply receiving the goods means that you’ve incurred the expense of the goods Similarly, if you’ve received some service — services from your lawyer, for