Accrued Revenue

  

You sold guns to Somalian warlords. You figured the cash you earned would literally pay for your sins in Hell. The warlords haven't yet paid you for those guns. They've promised to, uh..."raise" the dough at sea as soon as tourist season comes along.

The revenue that you're owed from the sales of those guns to the warlords is an accrued revenue––you have not yet billed them for the money, in part because you felt this was just rude, and with all the guns you've sold them, you really don't want to upset them.

The contract was signed, the revenues have been deemed to have been earned, and everything is final. You have great confidence that they will, in fact, pay after tourist season passes, and plan to bill them net thirty when that blessed time comes along. You muse the opening of the bill as "please allow me to introduce myself..."

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is Paid-In-Capital/Surplus...11 Views

00:00

finance a la shmoop what are paid in capital and capital surplus all right

00:08

well first you start with the original thousand bucks grandma gave you or [Someone taking a check]

00:12

rather invested in you and that's an important difference to buy 10 percent

00:17

of your lemonade business and note the import therefore defining paid in

00:21

capital that grandma is buying a slice of your lemonade stand pie representing [Piece of the pie chart is highlighted]

00:26

10 percent ownership of your company thousand bucks for ten percent she's not

00:31

giving you a low interest rate loan despite her career as a collection agent [Grandma holding a rolling pin and threatening someone]

00:35

for the mob so the thousand dollars is equity aka

00:38

ownership that capital is paid in and it's likely that in order to build the

00:44

16,000 lemonade stand stores that you dream of you will need to attract other [Lots of lemonade stands appearing]

00:49

investors who will then pay in more capital to own incremental percentages [Investors handing over cash for equity]

00:54

of your business as your own original hundred percent ownership when you

00:59

founded it it's diluted down to a sum much smaller number than the 90 percent [The kids piece of the pie chart gets smaller]

01:03

you own after Grandmama's grand but things go well and it turns out

01:07

amazingly that you didn't need to sell anymore equity in your company you were

01:12

able to grow by taking short-term loans which you then paid off by charging five [Lemonade stand taking loans from a brokerage, investors and a bank]

01:17

bucks a cup for the Absinthe kicker it was a huge hit among third graders so [Kid looking tired]

01:22

after four years you found yourself with a hundred ninety six thousand dollars in

01:26

cash in your lemonade stand bank account yes you had five grand worth of cups in [ATM showing the balance]

01:31

inventory a bunch of sugar and some other things yes they are probably

01:34

convertible quickly into cash but if you converted them quickly you would also [Liquid stamp]

01:39

suffer a massive discount in pricing because while semi used cups or at least

01:44

ones that have previously been sold even if they're in their original packaging

01:47

while they probably don't do well on eBay so for your purposes in assessing [Cups for sale on eBay]

01:51

your own capital surplus here you're going to ignore inventory and all of the

01:56

other elements that in a big or real company well you'd have to account for [Inventory items being crossed out]

02:00

at least consider when you thought about how liquid your company was and yes [Kid thinking of lots of cash floating on the sea]

02:03

that's not a reference to the product you actually sell so of that hundred

02:07

ninety six thousand dollars well one hundred ninety five grand of that

02:11

cash was capital surplus or just capital aka cash that came in the form of [Capital surplus calculation]

02:17

after-tax profits that you kept in your company as you grew it from a nothing to

02:22

something now that's how you make the most of your seed money [A hole being dug and seeds being planted]

Up Next

Finance: What is Accrued Interest?
42 Views

What is Accrued Interest? Most bonds pay interest on a fixed calendar schedule, which can be quarterly, bi-annually, or annually. The interest earn...

Finance: What is Accrual Accounting?
39 Views

What is Accrual Accounting? Accrual accounting is used to determine how well a company is doing by looking at the present and the future. It takes...

Finance: What is pooling: investment/interest?
3 Views

A pooled interest occurs when two or more investors combine capital in order to make a joint investment. Especially if investing in a prosthetics c...

Finance: What is Unearned Income?
32 Views

Unearned income is more than just the lunch money you stole on the playground. Hit play to find out more about unearned and earned income. And mayb...

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)