An accountant is a trained professional who has satisfied the statutory and administrative requirements under applicable law to practice as a licensed public accountant. These requirements vary from state to state. The accountant is responsible for performing the accounting of a business.
Accounting is the practice of accurately and timely recording, analyzing, summarizing, and classifying financial transactions of a business. Commonly, those financial transactions are recorded in a set of financial records called financial statements.
Accounts payable is an accounting term that describes the short-term debt that a company owes to its suppliers or vendors for products or services received before a payment is made, typically less than a year, such as within 30 or 60 days. Accounts payable may be abbreviated to “AP” or “A/P.” Accounts payable may also refer to a business department of a company responsible for organizing payments on such accounts to suppliers.
Accounts receivable (abbreviated AR or A/R) is an accounting term, which refers to the money owed to a business by another business or individual in exchange for property or services that were provided on credit. In other words, accounts receivable stands for the money that have not been paid to a business.
Under federal law, an accredited investor is a special kind of investor that due to certain special circumstances or qualities—as the ones indicated in Rule 501 of Regulation D—is allowed to purchase or be offered to purchase unregistered securities.
Accretion from natural causes (also referred to as alluvion) adds soil, sand, and other types of earth to the part of a person’s property that borders water. While this occurs very slowly, a piece of property may grow a lot over time and increase its value. Any addition to one’s property by accretion becomes that person’s legal property. This is in contrast with avulsion, where the original owner of the moved earth continues to own it.
The accrual method of accounting includes accounts payable and accounts receivable instead of ignoring those pending payments.
Accrue has two common definitions:
Accumulated earnings represent a company’s net profit after having distributed dividends to the stockholders. It is often used in accounting to determine how much net profits a company has left after having paid dividends.
An acquisition is buying/receiving a good or asset through a business transaction or contract. Acquisition most often refers to the sale of property, such as a business.
