You may know lots of things about money and what makes the world go around, but most of us really don’t know what a lot of simple accounting terms actually mean. We hear people use them everyday, and most of us are too afraid to ask someone what they really mean so we smile and go on about our day.
First things first, the word account has many different meanings. When the term is used in accounting, it is used to refer to different types of accounts that are held within a corporation; like sales accounts, accounts receivable and cash accounts.
An annuity is something you’ll hear a lot about, typically as related to investments and income taxes. An annuity is an expected amount of money that you’ll receive at the same time, every year or other allotted amount of time.
Assets are things which an individual or company own that will convert to money, in the future, if it is not currently cash, itself. These are things that are considered to have value to a person or company and help determine their value.
Debt is the amount of money that you owe to others. Simply, it is how much money you have borrowed from companies, individuals, and banks. It is the balance of how much is left to be paid back, including interest payments. It is subtracted from your worth or value.
Depreciation is a term that is used to describe an item’s loss of value. When something depreciates, it loses how much value it has. This can be said of accounts, cars and other investments.
The term depreciation is used to refer to a belonging or investment that has lost value. Most things depreciate or lose their worth, on a daily basis. One good example of this is an automobile. It depreciates from the moment you drive it off the lot.
A loss is something that you have when you sell an asset and you actually lose money on the deal. This would include a scenario where someone purchases shares of stock for $1 per share. They then sell the stock and only get. 50 for the shares. This is taking a loss.
You’ll hear people talk about r and d and r and d costs. This simply refers to research and development, which is a huge part of any and all corporate infrastructure. It weighs heavily when dealing with businesses and accounting.
Standard cost is something that is a set cost for an item or service. It helps people estimate what sort of costs they will be incurring in the future for particular things that they know they will need. This can help business in large part, make budgets for the year.
There are literally hundreds of other terms that you may encounter when discussing accounting with people. You can find these and other terms that are related to accounting by running a simple search online.
You will be surprised at how easy QuickBooks will be making your job. Public Accountant If you have ownership of investments and sell them for less than you purchased them for, it’s considered a loss. The cost of something that is expected to be a certain price is used in accounting for businesses for future planning.