Accounting and Finance Questions

The advantage of equity finance for a company – raising money by selling shares – is that this money does not have to be repaid. However, new shareholders usually get to have a say in how the company is run. Despite these rights, equity is often seen as a risky choice for investors as they will lose all their money if the company doesn’t prosper. If it does well, on the other hand, they may see their stake multiply in value many times over.

Debt finance – money raised through loans – must be repaid eventually by a company, usually with interest, but lenders won’t be able to exert as much influence as shareholders over how the company does business. The debt of a reliable company is usually seen as a safe investment, but fixed repayment schedules means that there are few opportunities for large returns.

It is Rs. 10,00,000 now.

Golden rules of accounting convert complex book-keeping rules into a set of well defined principles which can be easily studied and applied.

Real accounts involve machinery, land and building etc... Similarly when you credit what goes out, you are reducing the account balance when a tangible asset goes out of the organization. Debit All Expenses And Losses, Credit All Incomes And Gains. This rule is applied when the account in question is a nominal account.

Personal-Account

---Debit the receiver

---Credit the Giver

Real-Account

---Debit what comes in

---Credit what goes out

Nominal-Account

---Debit all expenses and losses

---Credit all income and gains

It is the allowance paid to an employee who is working on a special assignment.  This amount is completely exclusive of his Compensation plan.  These are given in scenerio's like, when the employee went for On Job Training or an Employee sent for short term Deputation to survive his expenses in the new location.

Most modern banking systems are based on Fractional reserves.

Fractional-reserve banking is the practice whereby a bank accepts deposits, makes loans or investments, but is required to hold reserves equal to only a fraction of its deposit liabilities. Reserves are held as currency in the bank, or as balances in the bank's accounts at the central bank.

1. In a fractional reserve banking system banks can create money through the lending process.

2. A fractional reserve banking system is susceptible to bank panics.

3. Bank panics are a risk of fractional reserve banking, but are unlikely when banks are highly regulated and lend prudently.

In international accounting LIFO and extraordinary items are prohibited

In international accounting, proposed dividend entry is made in the Year in which it is declared, but in Indian Accounting Standards Proposed Divided entry is passed in the year for which dividend is declared. e.g. Dividend for 09-10 declared in AGM on 14 Sept 2010, Financial (Accounting) Year = 2009-10

In Indian Accounting entry would be passed in 2009-10 Accounts books, but in International Accounting entry would be passed in the year 2010-11 Accounts books.

A bad debt provision is a reserve that you build up over time against the future recognition of specific accounts receivable as being uncollectible. Thus, if a company has issued invoices for a total of $1 million to its customers in a given month, and has a historical experience of 5% bad debts on its billings, it would be justified in creating a bad debt provision for $50,000 (which is 5% of $1 million).

It is impossible to know the exact amount of bad debts that will occur at some point in the future from the current account receivable, so it is entirely normal to continually readjust the bad debt provision, as you gain a greater understanding of how collectible the accounts receivable really are. These adjustments may lead to future increases or decreases in the bad debt expense. Since these adjustments can be viewed as a means of manipulating a company's reported profits, you should fully document your reasons for making the adjustments.

You would create a bad debt provision with a debit to the bad debt expense account, and a credit to the bad debt provision account. The bad debt provision account is an accounts receivable contra account, which means that it contains a balance that is the reverse of the normal debit balance found in the associated accounts receivable account. Later, when a specific invoice is found to be uncollectible, you create a credit memo in the accounting software for the amount of the invoice that is uncollectible. The credit memo reduces the bad debt provision account with a debit, and reduces the accounts receivable account with a credit. Thus, the initial creation of the bad debt provision creates an expense, while the later reduction of the bad debt provision against the accounts receivable balance is merely a reduction in offsetting accounts on the balance sheet, with no further impact on the income statement.

The reason for a bad debt provision is that, under the matching principle, you should match revenues with related expenses in the same accounting period. Doing so shows the full effect of a billed sale transaction in a single accounting period. If you were to not use a bad debt provision, and instead used the direct write off method to only charge bad debts to expense when you were certain that a specific invoice was not collectible, then the charge to expense might be many months later than the initial revenue recognition associated with the billing. Thus, under the direct write off method, profits will be too high in the period of the billing to the customer, and too low in the later period when you finally charge some portion or all of an invoice to the bad debt expense.

Foreign draft is an alternative to foreign currency; it is generally used to send money to a foreign country. It can be purchased from the commercial banks, and they will charge according to their banks rules and norms. People opt for ‘foreign draft’ for sending money as this method of sending money is cheaper and safer. It also enables receiver to access the funds quicker than a cheque or cash transfer.