Читать книгу Financial Accounting For Dummies - Maire Loughran - Страница 42

Liabilities are claims against the company’s assets. Usually, they consist of money the company owes to others. For example, the debt can be owed to an unrelated third party, such as a bank, or to employees for wages earned but not yet paid. Some examples of liabilities are accounts payable, payroll liabilities payable, and notes payable. I fully discuss each of these liabilities in Chapter 8. For now, here’s a brief description of each:

 Accounts payable: This is a current liability reflecting the amount of money the company owes to its vendors. This category is the flip side of accounts receivable because an account receivable on one company’s balance sheet appears as an account payable on the other company’s balance sheet.

 Payroll liabilities: Most companies accrue payroll and related payroll taxes, which means a company owes its employees money but has not yet paid them. This process is easy to understand if you think about the way you’ve been paid by an employer in the past. Most companies have a built-in lag time between when employees earn their wages and when the paychecks are cut.In addition to recording unpaid wages in this account, the company also has to add in any payroll taxes or benefits that will be deducted from the employee’s paycheck when the check is finally cut.

 Short-term notes payable: Notes payable that are due in full less than 12 months after the balance sheet date are short-term — or could be the short-term portion of a long-term note. For example, a business may need a brief influx of cash to pay mandatory expenses such as payroll. A good example of this situation is a working capital loan, which a bank makes with the expectation that the loan will be paid back from the collection of the borrower’s accounts receivable.

 Long-term notes payable: If a short-term note has to be paid back within 12 months after the balance sheet date, you’ve probably guessed that a long-term note is paid back after that 12-month period! A good example of a long-term note is a mortgage. Mortgages are used to finance the purchase of real property assets (see Chapters 7 and 12).