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+A/R and A/P are kind of deep, + +Anyways, let's consider A/R. We can't really relate to A/P +bcos we always pay *our* bills on time, don't we ? :-) + +So anyways, let's say we give our customers 30 days to pay. + +When we make a sale, the two accounts affected are Sales (an +income account) and A/R. A/R is an asset, but it's not liquid, +and it's not quite cash. + +Then when they come by to pay their bill, dropping off a big bag +of twenty-dollar bills, we transfer the amount from A/R to Cash. + +The reason we do it in two steps is that we've decided to do +our accounting on an accrual basis and not on a cash basis, +bcos, well, most of our transactions are not cash, they're +obligations. + +We report sales in our sales figures as soon as we make them, +but if the auditor wants to know about whether we're gonna get +stuck with bad debts, we break down those A/R's by how old they +are: 0-30 says, 31-60 says, etc. At some point when a particular +debt is "written off", like when the cheesing bastards go bankrupt, +we dock both A/R and Sales, so we're going back and patching up +(or rather, "patching down") the Sales account to show that the +Sale was never made good. + +We can use the same technique for things that we prepay. If +we have to plunk down six months' rent in advance, that is an +"accrued asset", and while it put a healthy dent in the Cash +account, it does show on the books as an asset. And if we've +been collecting payroll taxes from our employees and keeping +them in a special bank account, the money's not really ours, +so we have a growth in the Cash account on one side, and a +growth in an Accrued Liability, namely, Payroll Taxes Payable, +on the toher side. When we send the quarterly check to the +Feds so that they can make payroll too, our liability drops +and so does our Cash account. + ++