Normal business relationships among a parent and subsidiaries cause intercompany transactions that need to be recognized in the separate financial statements of these entities. When the time comes for periodic reporting, the parties engage in reconciling their accounts. In this article we will review the reasons why intercompany reconciliations are needed and look at reconciliation procedures.

We have previously discussed various methods of estimating bad debt expense, including percentage of sales and percentage of accounts receivable. In this article, we expand on the percentage of accounts receivable method by incorporating accounts receivable aging.

All businesses are not created equally. Apple and Google have massive operations in multiple geographic regions across the world, while a small manufacturing company might only own a single factory in Michigan. Should these three companies produce the exact same financial statements? In this article, we’ll look at how diversified companies are required to report operating segment results.

Owning a share of stock in a company might earn you a few dollars, but you don’t get to do a whole lot of decision-making as such a small investor. Corporations, on the other hand, invest in equity securities on a much larger scale. In this article, we’ll look at three different methods of accounting for stock investments.

Accounting can be a rewarding, challenging career for those with a strong analytical background. In this article, we’ll go over the basic career choices available to new accountants.

Many sales transactions are paid for immediately by the customer, and are relatively straightforward to account for. On the other hand, a sales contract might call for annual payments. The question then becomes, when should revenue be recognized? There are three general ways to account for the sale revenue, and the method used depends on the reliability of future cash payments.

In the first article of this series, we gave an overview of standard financial statements and additional disclosures and notes to the statements that a corporation produces on a periodic basis. In this article, we’ll touch on official reports that must be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by public companies.

In this series of articles, we will discuss the different types of financial statements required of a corporation by US GAAP and the different reports required of public companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission. For this part 1, we will give a brief overview of the major financial statements produced by a corporation - balance sheet, income statement, statement of shareholders’ equity, cash flow statement and related footnotes.

In theory, bonds are easy to account for. A long-term liability is established on the balance sheet, and periodic interest expense is applied to the calculation of net income. When the bond is repaid, the liability is cleared from the balance sheet. Not all bonds, however, are that simple to handle.

There are three main forms of financing available to a corporation. In this article, we discuss preferred stock, the middle-of-the-road option that sits between debt and common equity.