Читать книгу Accounting For Dummies - John A. Tracy - Страница 14

Businesses are profit motivated, so a natural question is “How much profit did the business earn over the last year?” Suppose the business had $120,000 surplus at the beginning of the year, and the business didn’t distribute any of its profit to its owners during the year. Therefore, the business earned $80,000 profit for the year: $120,000 surplus at start of year → $200,000 surplus at end of year = $80,000 gain in surplus, which is the profit for the year.

One popular misconception is that earning profit increases cash by the same amount. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that. Earning profit involves many assets and several liabilities. Cash is the main asset but not the only one affected by earning profit. One purpose of learning accounting is to understand the financial “fallout” from making profit. Profit consists of changes in assets and liabilities that, taken all together, increase the surplus of the business. The cash result from making profit is either higher or lower than the amount of profit. Isn’t this interesting?