Monthly Archives: September 2010

What Is an Accrued Expense – Accounting?

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Have you ever been baffled by accounting types telling you that a certain expense has been accrued? Some time ago I told someone about accrual of her expenses, and she was offended. I had to tell l her that to accrue something was not a horrible thing… Basically, to accrue an expense is to recognize a transaction before it has been paid or entered in the accounts payable system. In order to be accrued, an expense must have occurred during this period. If you used a service or purchased goods to be used now, then you recognize that expense now.

Accruals are usually made when books at closed, sometimes every month and for sure at year-end. Examples of accrued expenses could be:

* Payroll for work performed this period, but paid in the future — VERY COMMON

* Commission for sales that happened now, but will be paid in the future

* Utilities used this period, but paid in a following period

* Purchases for paper to be used this period, but paid in the future

* Expenses for an event that happened this period, but paid in the future

The point is to recognize the expense in the income statement, matching it with revenue for the same time period.

Oftentimes accountants estimate accrued expenses. This may happen when they don’t know how much these expenses will cost. Accountants usually look at accrued expenses of a prior period to make sure they don’t forget any transactions. If they notice expense accruals for insurance, for instance, then they know that they may have insurance expenses out there to be accrued.

Sometimes business people get confused between budget numbers and accruals. You do NOT accrue an expense just because you budgeted for it. You accrue an expense because the transaction actually happened during the period. This means that budget versus actual expenses variances may be explained by accrued expenses.

Technical Details

For the technically minded, below is the journal entry to book an accrued expense:

Debit – Different types of expenses reporting in the income statement

Credit — Liability accrued expense account, reporting in the balance sheet

When the accrued expense is paid, the journal entry is:

Debit — Liability account

Credit — Cash

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Midlife Career Change – Are You in the Right Job?

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Do you love what you do?

Most women who reach midlife in the 21st century have work experience outside the home. We may have had a career or several of them. We are now healthier, better-educated and have more opportunities than middle-agers who came before us. But we are generally less financially secure, and the recent economic situation has made this worse. As a result, we push ourselves harder at work, often rushing home to care for children or aging parents. We try to fit in exercise to fight off the aging process, and a little romance to help keep us young. It’s no wonder that we’re exhausted and worn out from all this effort.

In addition, many of us have taken the path of least resistance. We may have progressed from one job (or career) to another without much thought. Or we may have found ourselves doing work that was expected of us, instead of what we really wanted to do. If we aren’t doing work we love, we can wind up feeling dissatisfied, bored or unfulfilled as well. If this sounds like you, then maybe it’s time for a change.

Upgrading your job. The easiest way to change your work into something you truly love is at your current job. Sometimes it only takes a small change to create a great job out of a mediocre one. These steps will help you determine if this is the right step for you, and how you can enhance your job.

  1. Evaluate what is missing. What would it take to make your job ideal? Were you happy there at one time? What has changed?
  2. Consider the opportunities available at your company. Would additional education or training help? Does your company offer reimbursement of educational expenses? Or could you transfer to a different location, department or position that would better suit you?
  3. Do you have skills that you aren’t currently using? If so, see if you can find ways to incorporate those skills into your current job.
  4. Learn more about the company. What is the corporate agenda? If you would like a position with more responsibility, it helps to know what the objectives of the company are and how you might fit into this structure. Be realistic about the opportunities for advancement-will your boss ever leave?
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Two Essential Steps to Becoming a Thought Leader

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Every industry has them, and whether you like the term thought leader or not, they hold a wealth of power within culture and technology. Thought leaders possess a keen sense of creativity and vision. They’re always a step ahead.

We envy thought leaders, but the reality is that anyone can become one in two essential but very simple steps…

1. Think

It’s amazing to me how little of this we do for ourselves. We’re often content to allow others to do the thinking and creating while we sit and passively consume and pass along the ideas of others.

Being a thought leader requires thinking intentionally about the way things are and seeing the way things could be instead, even if the change is minute. It also requires the ability to get a little abstract and even eccentric. Thought leaders are capable of understanding the story of culture and making judgments about the future based on its flow.

Thinking is a discipline. Sometimes it requires a wealth of informational input, but our consumption must also be balanced with enough silence and solitude to give a certain concreteness to our thoughts.

Don’t just consume… think.

2. Lead

Profound, eh? Thinking is great, but it’s only step one. Acting on an idea and executing it are essential to the whole process of driving the culture and atmosphere around us. History probably knows its fair share of potential inventions and innovations that never came into being because of the reluctance of great thinkers.

Leading is risky. It means stepping out in front and challenging the status quo. Leading requires us to raise our voice and hope that someone listens and embraces our message.

Thought leaders are not only deep thinkers but effective communicators, connectors, and motivators.

3. Rinse and Repeat

I can’t fail to mention that the repetition of these two steps make all the difference between those who rise to the top over time and those who fade into the background. Thought leaders know when to move on to whatever is next.

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Website Writing – Write a Home Page That Entices Readers to Read Every Page of Your Site

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When you’re doing website writing for a new business site, make sure that your Home page captivates the attention of your reader and entices them to continue reading onto each subsequent page. The content of this page is critical to the success of the site, and ultimately the sales of your services. Here are a few guidelines to follow when you’re writing a Home page to sell your services.

1) Write this page last, after you’ve written the other pages. This may seem illogical to you, but here’s the reasoning. As you write the other pages of your site, you’ll find that your business evolves. You get new ideas. You must make decisions about how to present your services and you end up with different ideas on positioning, packaging, or target market. There’s no point in writing a Home page that reflects your business before you’ve gone through the process of writing everything else on the site. The transformation of your business that occurs from the writing process would inevitably require you to completely rewrite your Home page anyway. Leave this page to the end, once the other pages have been written.

2) Be sure that your this page is prospect-centric and readily answers the prospect’s question “What’s in it for me?” They’ve arrived on your Home page as a result of their search for a solution to their problem. Immediately let them know about the problems you can solve. You’re probably not going to give all the details on this page, but do describe enough so that they can feel hope that you can help them, and feel compelled to find out more.

3) Keep the page fairly short. The objective is to give enough information that the reader eagerly desires to read the following page for more details — then the page after that, and the page after that. This content should be a short, crisp and intriguing synopsis. It should leave them wanting to know more, yet be complete enough that they “get” your business.

4) This page needs to convey both your target market and the solution you provide them within ten seconds or your readers will click away from your site. This is the trickiest part of writing a Home page. How do you grab their attention? Make sure they recognize themselves and their problem. Be patient, specific and concise. Don’t wander, make it about them. Don’t go on and on about yourself. Talk about the problems you solve.

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How to Ask a Question in Czech Appropriately

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No matter what your reason is for visiting the Czech Republic, it is a nice way of showing your respect by acquiring knowledge regarding the Czech customs. You want to make sure that you are polite and well mannered by learning how to properly behave while at the home of another person or even when visiting an attraction. One of the things that you should know about is how to properly ask a question in Czech.

Just like in other conservative countries, there are formal and informal ways of asking a question in Czech. There are terms that you should know about so that you can show your respect to the elders or to those that are of higher statuses. In order for you to learn how to speak Czech properly, you will need guidance here. You can ask a friend who is fluent in speaking Czech or you can undergo an online Czech training. The good thing about the latter is that there are actually free courses while there are also some that are very affordable. This is very helpful especially for those who are planning to meet up with a potential business client in the Czech Republic.

Now, let us go back to asking a question in Czech. As an example, we can take on one of the most confusing types of questioning: the negative inquiries. For instance, if you want to ask if someone has something to eat, you will find yourself debating whether or not you should use “Nemas neco k jidlu?” (You don’t have something to eat?) or “Nemas nic k jidlu?” (You have nothing to eat?)” When questioning in a negative way, the choice would depend on the answer that you would like to acquire. If you would like to get a yes from the person you are talking to, it is more appropriate to select the first one. If it is a no, the second one is more suitable.

When you make use of a negative question, you give the person the option of saying yes or no without the feeling that he or she is being humiliated. Therefore, negative questions are deemed as more polite when you are in Czech. Note that for the Czechs, it is rude to ask, “Don’t you have something to eat?” just like when most English people do so. This is because this denotes that a person should have something to eat and yet he does not food.

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