Suppose you buy a major asset like a new piece of machinery. Under standard accounting rules, you cannot write off the cost of the machinery in the year you incur the expense. Rather, you have to ...

The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued an accounting standards update Thursday for nonprofits, modifying the definition of the term “collections” to align it with the American Alliance of ...

Construction workers tend to work based on contractors they make with the owners of property. Traditionally these contractors could choose from a variety of accounting procedures to account for the ...

Daniel Liberto is a journalist with over 10 years of experience working with publications such as the Financial Times, The Independent, and Investors Chronicle. Investopedia / Madelyn Goodnight ...

Accrual accounting is the GAAP-preferred practice of recording all revenues and expenses when they occur, even if payment has not yet been sent or received. In business, all financial transactions ...

Investopedia contributors come from a range of backgrounds, and over 25 years there have been thousands of expert writers and editors who have contributed. David Kindness is a Certified Public ...

Every year, for decades, the City of Chicago claimed to balance its budget as required by state law. Yet the City of Chicago still accumulated many billions of dollars of unfunded but real obligations ...

IT IS fashionable to lament the vapidity and short-termism of institutional shareholders. Without them, it is argued, companies would invest for the long term, run by their enlightened managers. But a ...

Now that the various classifications of revenue have been defined, it is important to identify what is revenue. Identifying what qualifies as revenue is critical not only from an accounting and ...