Students can expect accounting problems from any of the three major areas of accounting. They are
- financial accounting
- cost accounting
- taxation
We shall give brief study of the three major areas and inform students as to how they can avail of MyAssignmenthelp.com services to solve their accounting assignment problems.
Financial accounting help
Financial Accounting is the field of accountancy that is concerned with the summary, analysis and reporting of business transactions of a company or an individual. Further, it may be of a sole proprietorship or a joint stock company. Preparation of account statements according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) is a major component of financial accounting. Three major types of financial accounting statements are:
- Income statement
- Statement of owner’s equity
- Balance sheet
An income statement is a measurement of a company’s financial performance for a specific period of time usually a quarter of the financial year or the whole financial year. Publically traded companies must produce their income statements along with their balance sheets and statement of owner’s equity or stock holder’s equity for all the quarters as well as for the whole year according to the GAAP. The company must show its net profit from both operating and non-operating activities. Operating activities may involve all the activities with which the company is directly involved. On the other hand, non-operating activities list those in which the company is not directly involved such as sales of investments. A typical income statement for a company looks like the following:
Revenue
|
Dollars ($)
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Net Sales
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60,000
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Gross income
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20,000
|
Expenses
| |
Cost of sales
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20,000
|
Selling
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10,000
|
General admin
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10,000
|
Profit
| |
Gross profit
|
20,000
|
Net profit
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15,000
|
Pretax profit
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20,000
|
After tax profit
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15,00
|
A student will be given financial information about a company and he or she will have to calculate the net profit of that company
Net profit = Revenue – expenses (taxes included)
So in the above financial statement, the net profit will be
60,000 – 40,000 – 5000 = 15,000 Dollars.
Next we come to statement of equity. A statement of equity shows the owner’s or the stockholder’s equity in a company. If it is a single proprietorship, it is called owner’s equity while if the company is a joint stock enterprise then it is called a stockholder’s equity. It is given by the formula,
Owner’s Equity = Assets – Liabilities.
Since a statement of owner’s equity shows the changes in the owner’s financial interest in the company after expenses and payments of dividends, it is also called retained earnings. Retained earnings are given by the following formula:
Retained earnings= beginning capital + net income (revenue- expenses) - dividend
If the financial entity in question is a corporation then the formula is given by the following statement:
Retained earnings= paid in capital + net income – dividend – treasury stocks.
The basic utility of a statement of equity is that it uses information from the income statement and gives information to the balance sheet, the last of the three major financial statements. Here is a typical equity statement of a single proprietorship.
Beginning Balance = 5000 $
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Dividends= 2500 $
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Revenue 20,000 $
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Expenses 10,000 $
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Retained Earnings = 12500 $
|
Once an accounting student has the net income and the retained earnings he can use the expanded accounting equation to prepare the balance sheet. We know that in simple accounting equation,
Assets= Liabilities + Owner’s equity
We can replace the owner’s equity with the formula of retained earnings. So the expanded accounting equation will include:
Assets= Liabilities + Owner’s capital+ Revenue – expenses – dividend or,
Assets = Liabilities + paid in capital + revenue – expenses – dividend – treasury stocks
Here is a balance sheet for a company called Joe’s burger in Sydney for the month ending on 31st October 2013.
Assets
|
Liabilities
|
Owner’s Equity
|
Net Income:
Accounts receivable $ 10,000
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Net Expense :
Accounts payable $ 20,000
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Joe’s retained earnings $ 27,500
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Restaurant, furniture and fixtures $ 30,000
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Vehicle $ 5000
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Cash $ 2500
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Total Assets $ 47,000
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Total Liabilities $ 20,000
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Owner’s Equity $ 27,500
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Total Assets $ 47,000
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Total liabilities + Owner’s Equity $ 47,000
|
Cost accounting help
The field of accounting in which all costs incurred in carrying out an economic production are collected, classified and recorded in order to determine the cost of a product is called cost accounting. The major difference between financial accounting and cost accounting is that while the former considers money as an indicator of financial performance, the latter takes money as a factor in economic production. The major area of cost accounting is job order costing. Job order costing is a method by which a company arrives at a selling price of a product or a service by taking into considerations certain productive factors like cost of material, cost of labour and overhead cost.
A job costing problem will typically give students some financial information about product and will ask students to determine the price by using all the job costing methods. In order to do a job order costing, you will need to know
- The labor cost
- The material cost
- Overhead cost
The labor cost is the amount of money paid to a labourer on an hourly basis divided by the time that has gone into making the product. So if a company pays 10 dollars an hour to the labourers and a labourer takes 3 minutes to prepare the product then labour cost will be $0.50. (5 % of 10 dollars).
Material cost is the cost of the materials incurred by the company, divided by the number of units manufactured with those materials. So if a company buys say 10,000 dollars of materials and manufactures 50,000 units of the intended product, then the cost of material would be $ 0.20.
Finally overhead cost will involve all the costs involved in manufacturing of the product that cannot be included in either material or labour. They may be of two types: manufacturing overhead (factor expenses rental, property taxes, mortgages) and non-manufacturing overhead (administrative costs and maintenance cost). This is usually difficult to determine. So students must decide upon a predetermined manufacturing overhead rate which is
Total manufacturing overhead cost/ total estimated base.
A base is the main driver of the production process. So if a product is labour intensive then the base will be labor cost and if it is material intensive then the base will be total cost of material. These costs are usually expressed in terms of the total cost incurred on a yearly a basis. The predetermined manufacturing overhead cost must be added to the labour and material costs. The final job cost will be:
labor cost per unit + material cost per unit + predetermined manufacturing rate
Taxation help
Taxation questions constitute the third major field of enquiry for an accountant. Tax accounting unlike financial accounting focus on taxes rather than publication of financial statements. Tax accounting is typically done on the basis of internal revenue code which dictates the taxation principles rather than on the basis of GAAP.
How MyAssignmenthelp.com can help students in accounting assignments?
Students looking for accounting assignment help in any of the three major areas of accounting can now get help from our accounting assignment experts. We provide quality assignment help to students in solving their accounting problems, job costing problems and taxation law assignment problems. Students can also browse through our website where plenty of sample articles have been uploaded. In order to get accounting assignment help, you will have to simply state your problem and our accounting assignment experts will contact you back with free accounting assignment quotes. You will receive your best assignment help within the given deadline in your mail inbox.
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