Accounting for Lawyers Flashcards
(143 cards)
Free Cash Flow
Describes net cash provided by operating activities after adjusting for capital expenditures & dividends paid.
Free Cash Flow = Net Cash (provided by operating activities) - Capital Expenditures - Cash Dividends
Useful Information (as defined by FASB & IASB)
Has 2 fundamental qualities: relevance and faithful representation.
Relevance = has predictive value
- materiality is a company-specific aspect of relevance. An item is material when its size makes it likely to influence the decision of an investor or creditor.
Faithful representation = complete, neutral, free from error.
Enhancing Qualities (FASB/IASB)
Comparability, verifiability, timeliness, and understandability. consistency
Monetary Unit Assumption
Requires that only things that can be expressed in money are included in the accounting records. Things like customer satisfaction not reported.
Economic Entity Assumption
Every economic entity can be separately identified/accounted for. Important not to blur company transactions with personal transactions or transactions of other companies.
Periodicity Assumption
Life of a business can be divided into artificial time periods & that useful reports covering those periods can be prepared for the business.
Going Concern Assumption
The business will remain in operation for the foreseeable future.
Historical Cost Principle
Companies record assets at their cost. True at time asset purchased & over the time asset is held.
Tradeoff is btwn relevance and faithful representation.
Fair Value Principle
Price received to sell an asset or settle a liability. May be more useful for certain types of asset/liabilities like investment securities.
Tradeoff is btwn relevance and faithful representation. In general, FASB indicates most assets must follow historical cost principle bc market values may not be representationally faithful. Only I situations where assets are actively traded is the fair value principle applied.
Full Disclosure Principle
Requires companies to disclose all circumstances & events that would make a difference to financial statement users.
If an important item cannot reasonably be reported directly in one of the four types of financial statements, then it should be discussed in notes that accompany the statement.
Cost Constraint
Accounting standard-setters must consider the cost companies incur to provide information against benefit that financial statement users gain from having it available.
Accounting Information System
System of collecting & processing transaction data & communicating financial info to decision-makers.
Factors include: type of transactions, nature of the business, size of company, volume of data, etc.
Accounting Cycle
- Analyze Business Transactions
- Journalize
- Post
- Trial Balance
- Adjusting Entries
- Adjusted Trial Balance
- Financial Statements
- Closing Entries
- Post-Closing Trial Balance
Accounting Transactions
Economic events that require recording in the financial statements
Basic Accounting Equation
Assets = Liabilities + Stockholders’ Equity
Account
An individual accounting record of increases/decreases in a specific asset, liability, stockholders’ equity, revenue, or expense item.
In simplest form, consists of Title, Debit, Credit = T-account. Use terms to describe where entries are made in accounts, do not mean increase/decrease.
Balance
If debit/credit exceed the other, a debit/credit balance exists.
Debit mean increase in cash. Credit means decrease in cash.
DC ADE LER Method for Debit/Credit
Debit +: Assets, Dividends, Expenses
Credit +: Liabilities, Equity, Revenue
Recording Process
- Analyze each transaction in terms of its effects on the accounts
- Enter the transaction info in a journal
- Transfer the journal information to the appropriate accounts in the ledger
The Journal
- Discloses in one place the complete effect of a transaction
- Provides a chronological record of a transaction
- Helps to prevent or locate errors bc the debit/credit amounts for each entry can be readily compared
The Ledger
Provides the balance in each of the accounts and keeps track of changes in these balances.
General Ledger
Contains all the asset, liability, stockholders’ equity, revenue, and expense accounts.
Posting
Procedure of transferring journal entry amounts to ledger accounts.
1. In the ledger, enter in appropriate columns of the debited amount(s) the date & debit amount shown in the journal.
- In the ledger, enter in the appropriate columns of the credited amount(s) the date and credit amount shown in the journal.
The Trial Balance
Proves the mathematical equality of debits & credits after posting. Sum of debit account balances = sum of credit account balances.
- List the account titles & their balances
- Total the debit column & total the credit column
- Verify the equality of the 2 columns
Does not prove that all transactions have been recorded or that the ledger is correct.