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A chart of accounts (COA) is a list of financial accounts and reference numbers, grouped into categories, such as assets, liabilities, equity, revenue and expenses, and used for recording transactions in the organization's general ledger. Accounts may be associated with an identifier (account number) and a caption or header and are coded by ...
Accounts receivable represents money owed by entities to the firm on the sale of products or services on credit. In most business entities, accounts receivable is typically executed by generating an invoice and either mailing or electronically delivering it to the customer, who, in turn, must pay it within an established timeframe, called credit terms [citation needed] or payment terms.
The difference between the assets and the liabilities is known as equity or the net assets or the net worth or capital of the company and according to the accounting equation, net worth must equal assets minus liabilities. [4] Another way to look at the balance sheet equation is that total assets equals liabilities plus owner's equity.
The general ledger contains a page for all accounts in the chart of accounts [5] arranged by account categories. The general ledger is usually divided into at least seven main categories: assets, liabilities, owner's equity, revenue, expenses, gains and losses. [6] It is the system of record for an organization’s financial transactions. [7]
Historical cost principle: requires companies to account and report assets' and liabilities' acquisition costs rather than fair market value. This principle provides information that is reliable (removing opportunity to provide subjective and potentially biased market values), but not very relevant. Thus there is a trend to use fair values.
The classification of accounts into real, personal and nominal is based on their nature i.e. physical asset, liability, juristic entity or financial transaction. The further classification of accounts is based on the periodicity of their inflows or outflows in the context of the fiscal year: Income is a short term inflow during the fiscal year.
Revenues and gross profit are recognized each period based on the construction progress, in other words, the percentage of completion. Construction costs plus gross profit earned to date are accumulated in an asset account (construction in process, also called construction in progress), and progress billings are accumulated in a liability account (billing on construction in process).
A ledger [a] is a book or collection of accounts in which accounting transactions are recorded. Each account has: an opening or brought-forward balance; a list of transactions, each recorded as either a debit or credit in separate columns (usually with a counter-entry on another page) and an ending or closing, or carry-forward, balance.