Читать книгу Financial Accounting For Dummies - Maire Loughran - Страница 28

Years ago, the bookkeeper at one of my client companies spent five hours tracking down the reason why the company bank reconciliation was off by $2 to make sure the bank hadn’t made a mistake. (Preparing a bank reconciliation means you take the balance in the bank account per the bank as of a certain date, add in any deposits that got to the bank too late to hit the statement, and subtract any checks the company has written that have not yet cleared.) Yikes!

Now, was this an effective and efficient use of that bookkeeper’s time and salary expense? No, of course not. Say she was paid $10 per hour. It cost the company $50 for her to confirm that the operating account bank balance was indeed off by $2, and it wasn’t just an inadvertent mistake on the part of the bank.

For example, an expense totaling $10,000 would be material if the total expense amount is $50,000 but would likely be immaterial if the total expense was $500,000. But the nature of the transaction may make the difference material even if the comparative size is immaterial. For example, $10,000 that is deliberately — not accidentally — excluded from income may be material even if the amount is a small percentage of overall income. That’s because the deliberate exclusion may be an attempt by the owner of the company to avoid paying taxes on the income.

Conservatism is very important in financial accounting. It means that when in doubt, the financial accountant should choose the financial accounting treatment that will cause the least favorable effect on revenue or expenses.