Assets refer to financial value of a possession. Possessions in business can be physical in nature such as a vehicle or in the form of paper such as cash or contractual rights. Assets are generally reported in the upper half of a balance sheet.
Just as manufacturing uses controls to ensure quality of product, controls are used in accounting to generate accurate information, maintain security over assets and comply with Generally Accepted Accounting Standards. The company implements various controls to assure accurate and timely information.
In the previous 25 lessons I covered a lot of different terms and this lesson is merely a summary of the various terms a bookkeeper encounters.
The accounting equation is a simple formula used frequently in business. The formula is: Assets = Liabilities plus Equity OR Equity = Assets minus Liabilities.
One of the performance ratios used in business identifies the overall ability of management to efficiently utilize resources to generate a profit. Corporate resources include human knowledge/skills and the balance sheet assets of the business. The labor component is unquantifiable in terms of dollars, but assets with a dollar value associated with them are reflected on the balance sheet. The return on assets measures management’s ability to earn a profit on these balance sheet assets.
Debits and credits are two words that are the most recognized terms synonymous to bookkeeping and accounting. I have read over 30 different articles as to how other authors define debits and credits with bookkeeping. Several authors try to get the reader to visualize the terms as the left side and the right side of the ‘T’-Account (I also describe this in Lesson 2).
To fully grasp the concept of accounting a bookkeeper must accept that there are six (6) different types of accounts. All the reports, ledgers, journals and entries revolve around these six types of accounts. Bookkeeping is the function of entering data based on the economic transaction into the respective type of account.
