What Is Deferred Accounts Receivable?
These two get confused because both arise when billing and delivery happen at different times. They are not the same thing and they sit on opposite sides of the balance sheet.
Read the guideSteady learning center
Practical financial guides for small business
Get direct, useful answers about bookkeeping, reporting, payroll, taxes, hiring, pricing, and accounting systems. Filter the library by topic or format to find the guide you need.
Browse the library
Find a guide
619 published guides
-
-
What Is Electrical Contractor Chart of Accounts?
Electrical contractors run two businesses inside one company: service work, which is high volume and short duration, and project work, which is fewer jobs, longer duration, and frequently involves progress billing and retainage. A chart of accounts that does not separate them produces a blended margin that describes neither.
Read the guide -
What Is Excise Tax?
Excise tax is a federal, state, or local tax imposed on specified goods, services, activities, transactions, or uses rather than on general business profit.
Read the guide -
What Is Federal Unemployment Tax?
Federal unemployment tax, commonly called FUTA, is an employer-only federal payroll tax that helps fund the federal-state unemployment system. It is generally reported annually on Form 940.
Read the guide -
What Is Financial Forecasting Models?
A forecasting model is the method by which you turn assumptions into projected numbers. The choice of model matters less than whether the assumptions are traceable, but some approaches suit small businesses considerably better than others.
Read the guide -
What Is Form 1099-K?
Form 1099-K reports the gross amount of payment-card transactions and qualifying third-party-network payments processed for a payee. It does not by itself determine taxable profit.
Read the guide -
What Is Franchise Tax?
A franchise tax is generally a state charge for the privilege of forming, registering, or doing business as an entity. It is not a federal tax on purchasing a commercial franchise.
Read the guide -
What Is General Ledger QuickBooks Desktop?
The general ledger report lists every transaction posted to every account for a chosen period. It is the report you use when a figure on a statement needs explaining, and most users never open it.
Read the guide -
What Is IRS Vehicle Depreciation?
IRS vehicle depreciation allocates the business-use portion of a purchased vehicle's adjusted basis over tax years, subject to MACRS, Section 179, bonus, passenger-auto, listed-property, and recapture rules.
Read the guide -
What Is Medicare Tax Withholding?
Medicare tax withholding is an employer payroll process.
Read the guide -
What Is Monthly Reconciliation of General Ledger Accounts?
Most small businesses reconcile the bank account and stop. That leaves every other balance sheet account unverified, which is precisely where errors accumulate quietly for months.
Read the guide -
What Is Non Trade Accounts Receivable?
Trade receivables are amounts customers owe you for goods or services you sold them. Non-trade receivables are everything else you are owed that did not arise from selling to a customer.
Read the guide -
What Is Note Payable Accounting?
Note payable accounting records a formal borrowing obligation, separates principal from interest, and keeps the current and long-term portions of the debt visible on the balance sheet.
Read the guide -
What Is Payable Reconciliation?
Learn how payable reconciliation connects the accounts-payable subledger, vendor statements, unpaid bills, payments, credits, and the general ledger.
Read the guide -
What Is Profit Loss Forecast?
A profit and loss forecast projects revenue, cost of sales, and operating expenses over a future period, producing an expected profit figure. It answers whether the business model works at the volumes you expect, which is a different question from whether you will have cash.
Read the guide -
What Is Projecting Accounts Receivable?
Projecting receivables means estimating how much of what you are owed will actually arrive, and in which week. It is the single largest input to any cash forecast, and it is where most forecasts go wrong.
Read the guide -
What Is Quarterly Rolling Forecast?
A quarterly rolling forecast is a financial projection that always looks the same distance ahead. Each quarter you drop the one that just finished and add a new one at the far end, so the horizon never shortens. A four-quarter rolling forecast in March looks through to the following March; in June it looks through to the June after.
Read the guide -
What Is QuickBooks Advanced Payroll?
In the United States, QuickBooks Online Advanced is an accounting plan and payroll is added separately; current Intuit payroll services are generally identified as Core, Premium, or Elite.
Read the guide -
What Is QuickBooks for Construction Contractors?
QuickBooks can run a contracting business well. It is not built for construction out of the box, and the difference between a file that produces job costing and one that does not is entirely in the setup.
Read the guide -
What Is Receivables Reconciliation?
Learn how to reconcile accounts receivable detail to the general ledger, investigate differences, validate aging, and document month-end controls.
Read the guide -
What Is SaaS Fractional CFO?
A SaaS fractional CFO connects contract, billing, service-delivery, customer, cash, and ledger data. The work is useful only when revenue policy and operating metrics use written definitions that can be reproduced.
Read the guide -
What Is Startup Financial Forecasting?
Forecasting without history is a different exercise. You cannot extrapolate, so everything rests on assumptions, and the quality of the model is judged entirely on whether those assumptions are defensible.
Read the guide -
What Is Tax Compliance for a Small Business?
Tax compliance is the complete system for registering, keeping records, reporting accurately, filing on time, paying correctly, responding to notices, and retaining evidence.
Read the guide -
What Is Taxable Income for a Business?
Business taxable income is the amount computed under the tax rules for the entity and return. It is not automatically gross receipts, book profit, bank deposits, or cash available to the owner.
Read the guide