Overview of Accounting Essay

The audiences of financial statements and managerial reports include the shareholders, employees, prospective employees, customers, suppliers, the government, the stock exchanges, investors, lenders and the public at large. What is important is that each audience has a different perspective in reading the financial statements and managerial reports. For example, a lender would like to know the leverage of the company, if it has the capacity to service debt and if the loans to the company would be well secured. There are several purposes served in preparing financial statements and managerial reports. The financial statements are designed to show its audience, the companies finances, that is how the company got its finances, what it was used for and where is it being currently used (Luecke, R. 2002). For this purpose there are four main financial statements that is the income statement, the cash flow statement, the balance sheet and the statement of shareholders equity. In general an income statement has the purpose of showing how much revenue a company earned in a period of time, the balance sheet shows the company’s assets, liabilities and shareholders equity, the cash flow statement shows the inflow and outflow of cash and the purpose of the statement of shareholders equity is to show changes in the ownership of company’s shareholders over a period of time. The nature of the income statement is in the form of a report that shows the costs and expenses that the businesses incurs in order to earn its revenue. It gives the net earnings of the company. The nature of balance is such that it provides point wise information about the assets, liabilities and shareholders equity. The nature of a businesses balance sheet is such that it is set up like the basic accounting equation. Usually on the left hand side the companies list the assets and on the right hand side they list their liabilities with the shareholders’ interest at the bottom. This arrangement differs from country to country. For instance, in some countries the assets are listed on the right hand side. However, the basic nature of the balance sheet remains the same. The nature of the cash flow statement is such that it can inform its audience if the business generated cash or not. The cash flow statement is a report that shows cash changes over time instead of exact currency amounts at a point in time. It simply uses and rearranges information from the balance sheet and income statement of the business. The most important report that is issued by the management of a company is the annual report (Stittle, J. 2003). The nature of this report is such that it has detailed financial and business information required by law of the country in which the company is registered, modern annual reports have impressive pictures and stories that eulogize the company’s performance in the past year. The information contained in this report can help the audience make informed and ethical decisions. In the USA the SEC requires that the audited annual report be sent to every shareholder at the end of the year. In this the management comments about the future. Form 10-K required to be filled in the USA ha more detailed financial information. The company’s financial performance is described in a section of the quarterly or annual report that is called â€Å"Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operation,† In this section of the Annual Report the management describes its own understanding of the financial condition of the company. The management in this section of the annual or quarterly report describes what it understands of the current financial condition of the business. It also gives its view of the relevant trends and challenges that the business faces. This allows the audience to see the financial condition of the business from the perspective of management and allows the audience to make informed and ethical decisions. In other words it provides the audiences the background that is required to study and understand the financial statements. Financial accounting information can be used in making informed and ethical business decisions. How? The income statement shows the earning per share, a calculation that tells you how much you as a shareholder would receive if the company distributed all its earnings. This allows you to make an invest/ non invest decision. Giving more information about the financial health of the company is the cash flow statement. It divides cash flow into flows from operating activities, investing activities and financing activities. This informs not only the investors but also the management, employees, suppliers and customers about the source of cash for the company and allows them to make better decisions. The footnotes of the reports give important information that helps make efficient and ethical decisions. The footnotes refer to stock options, pension plans, income taxes and important accounting policies and practices. For example, a company may be showing an inflated profit figure because its accounting practices have changed but reading the footnotes helps the audiences make better decisions and ethical decisions with regards to the company. To make ethical and informed decisions it is important to read between the lines of these reports. How is this accomplished? By doing ratio analysis! Commonly the ratios that are examined are debt-to-equity ratio, inventory turnover ratio, operating margin ratio, P/E ratio and working capital. Consider this, well before the Enron scam exploded; several investors were able to smell by examining the ratios that something was wrong with the company. They decided to sell off their stocks and avoided losses. To sum, the intention of the financial statements and management report is to inform the different stakeholders of a business. If these statements are carefully analyzed and understood they help these stakeholders make an informed and ethical decisions.

Psychology: Learning by Doing Essay

A news article entitled â€Å"Keeping your DNA fit: Researchers find exercise buffs have ‘younger’ cells† was released by The Philadelphia Inquirer at the Psychology News Report Section of the American Psychological Association online. The news article was about the newest study released last January 28, 2008 stating that exercise could slow down the aging process in human beings. The authors of the study concluded that the people who exercise more take a slower course of aging than those who have been â€Å"chronically sedentary† (Flam, 2008).   The authors supported this claim with the experiment they conducted involving 67 pairs of identical twins where one of the twins had a sedentary lifestyle while the other had been mostly active and exercises regularly (Flam, 2008). The term exercising regularly has been operationally defined as â€Å"more than three hours a week running, cycling, pumping iron, or other vigorous activity† (Flam, 2008). On the other hand, sedentary has been defined as â€Å"less than 16 minutes [of exercise] a week on the average† (Flam, 2008). The comparisons of the twin’s telomeres revealed that those twins who exercise more have longer telomeres. The telomere is the part of the DNA which becomes shorter when it divides (Flam, 2008). For the old people, the telomere becomes too short for the DNA to be capable of dividing and thus, it just shut downs the cells but it continues to exist (Flam, 2008). The research still continues for the authors to be able to refine the study because there is still the â€Å"chicken-and-egg question† of whether it is the exercise that enables the people to stay young or the healthy condition that enables people to exercise more (Flam, 2008). Further studies would need to be done with this as there might be differences in the capacity of people such as the twins. Though they may have the same set of genes, there is still a difference with the environment they live in that makes them a lot healthier than the other twin and enables them to exercise more such as the type and quality of food available and the levels of stress. Indeed, the most appropriate conclusion for the study is that exercise is one of the factors that slow down the rate of aging but is not the sole reason for the slow aging process (Flam, 2008).    The news article was able to identify the basic answers to basic questions. It poses the side of the research itself and the whereabouts but does not even provide the title and authors of the study. The lead author was mentioned but this could do little compared to having the title of the study itself. In addition to this, alternative views were not presented clearly. References Flam, F. (2008). Keeping your DNA fit: Researchers find exercise buffs have ‘younger’ cells. Retrieved January 29, 2008, from http://psycport.apa.org/showArticle.cfm?xmlFile=knightridder%5F2008%5F01%5F29%5F%5F0000%2D0241%2DPH%2DKeeping%2Dyour%2DDNA%2Dfit%2D0129%2Exml&provider=The%20Philadelphia%20Inquirer.

Urbanisation

Urbanisation in the world today is an ongoing process that has a profound impact on people's living conditions and health status. The globalisation of markets, the desire for higher education, increased use of communication, and new information technologies are the driving forces behind this process. The urbanisation process has marked effects on the natural and cultural environment, on housing arrangements and social networks, as well as on work and employment patterns, not only in the cities, but also in the rural areas.Access to health care, social services, and cultural activities are in many cases better in the cities, but there the access may not be evenly distributed among the population. Problem of urbanization is manifestation of lopsided urbanization, faulty urban planning, urbanization with poor economic base and without having functional categories . Hence India's urbanization is followed by some basic problems in the field of : 1) housing, 2) slums, 3) transport 4) water supply and sanitation, 5) water pollution and air pollution, 6)inadequate provision for social infrastructure ( school, hospital, etc ).Class I cities such as Calcutta , Bombay, Delhi, Madras etc have reached saturation level of employment generating capacity (Kundu,1997). Since these cities are suffering from of urban poverty, unemployment, housing shortage, crisis in urban infra-structural services these large cities can not absorb these distressed rural migrants i. e poor landless illiterate and unskilled agricultural labourers. Hence this migration to urban class I cities causes urban crisis more acute. 2 Most of these cities using capital intensive technologies can not generate employment for these distress rural poor.So there is transfer of rural poverty to urban poverty. Poverty induced migration of illiterate and unskilled labourer occurs in class I cities addressing urban involution and urban decay. 3 Indian urbanization is involuted not evoluted ( Mukherji, 1995). Poverty induced migration occurs due to rural push . Megacities grow in urban population (Nayak,1962) not in urban prosperity, and culture. Hence it is urbanization without urban functional characteristics.These mega cities are subject to extreme filthy slum and very cruel mega city denying shelter, drinking water, electricity,  sanitation ( Kundu,,Bagchi and Kundu, 1999) to the extreme poor and rural migrants. 4 Urbanisation is degenerating social and economic inequalities ( Kundu and Gupta, 1996) which warrants social conflicts, crimes and anti-social activities. Lopsided and uncontrolled urbanization led to environmental degradation and degradation in the quality of urban life—-pollution in sound, air, water, created by disposal of hazardous waste. Illiterate, low- skill or no-skill migrants from rural areas are absorbed in poor low grade urban informal sector at a very low wage rate and urban informal sector becomes in-efficient and unproductive.

Amanda and Hal's wedding Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Amanda and Hal's wedding - Essay Example Weddings now take meticulous planning and active audience participation. Non-traditional weddings are fun, event filled occasions. While mixed weddings on the other hand, tend to take the best of the traditional and non-traditional ceremonies in order to come up with a uniquely memorable event. I have been lucky enough to have been a part of all three types of wedding ceremonies. When my cousin Cathy decided to get married a couple of years back, she decided to go with a traditional wedding ceremony since she came from a highly religious part of the family. The whole family was involved in getting the wedding off the ground. Since this was to be a traditional event, Cathy's family shouldered all the expenses for the ceremony and the reception. The religious ceremony was done at the same church where here parents were married. The Maid Of Honor was her married sister, and my sister and I were her bridesmaids. She wore her mother's wedding gown which was updated in design for her own b ig day. Cathy walked down the aisle to the traditional wedding march, on the arm of her father. Upon leaving the church as husband and wife, the newly married couple joined a few select group of family and friends for a small reception at the house of Cathy's parents. Everything about the way Cathy's wedding was handled told you that it was old school or traditional in nature. It had the feel of a familiar hand within all the aspects of the special day. It was quite obvious that everyone related to the family had pitched in and did their part to make the event as memorable as possible on an intimate level. A non-traditional wedding however, well, that's just something right up my cousin Rick's alley. He had always been a person who got his kicks out of crazy experiments. Who knew that he would decide to experiment on his wedding day as well? Okay, his choice of bride may have had something to do with it. She was just as imaginative as he was. Their wedding, was done without much pla nning during a scuba diving trip to Hawaii. Maybe it was the location, or maybe it was the hyper joy that they were feeling during the time they spent on the island paradise. Whatever the reason, they came back from the trip with a video of their under the sea wedding that totally knocked the family off its feet. Talk about non-traditional, there was no wedding gown or tuxedo involved, just wet suits. No bridesmaids or groomsmen, instead they had lifeguards with oxygen tanks on the ready. The justice of the peace that married them joined them on the beach for the first half of the ceremony, where only a handful of friends and family who could fly out to for the impromptu event gathered to bear witness, and then the 3 of them, with lifeguards and their videographer dove into the deeper parts of the waters to seal the deal. Unique, non-traditional, and very exciting. Anybody who got married under those conditions would have to be crazy. But then again, that is what makes a non-traditi onal wedding unique and memorable. Finally, we come to the mixed wedding ceremony, which takes the best of the traditional and non-traditional weddings to come up with a truly memorable and unique event for the couple who, in this case, was my sister Amanda and her fiancee Hal. As expected, it as done at a proper church with my sister in a traditional, but specially designed for her wedding gown. I stood as her maid of honor in a list of 4 bridesmaids and 4 groomsmen. I guess that is

Lakoff and Johnson Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Lakoff and Johnson - Assignment Example According to Lakoff and Johnson, metaphorical concepts are beyond the ordinary meaning and far from the literal thinking and talking as they contain figurative, colorful, or poetic language (1980). Structural metaphors are conventional metaphors in which one of the concepts can be expressed in terms of another that is structured and sharply defined. For example According to Lakoff and Johnson, structural metaphors are cases in which source domains give the frameworks for the target domains in arguments (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). In structural metaphors, economic activity is equal to war and relates various economic activities as war and the economy as the battlefield. The competitors in the businesses are warriors or armies that fight against each other. The economic activities take the concepts of attack and defense as in the example. â€Å"Due to the crises, the Indians will strike back meaning the country will work hard to revive the economy. Another example is "Labor is a resource and time is a resource†. The metaphors relate to economic resources especially in developed countries where labor and time are valuable assets for

Family and Child Clinic Feasibility Study Term Paper

Family and Child Clinic Feasibility Study - Term Paper Example The incorporation will help the clinic avoid loads of costly asset purchases and other time-consuming needs such as assignment of leases. Budgets for marketing might be trimmed as the larger hospital will undertake the marketing costs. Knowledge and Expertise Incorporation will help the new clinic make use of highly trained and skilled health professionals from the larger hospital. Development departments not available in the clinic such as Researchers and scientists will work together with staff from the clinic to generate great innovative services. Combined skills of the marketing staff will generate more sales and the net result is increased profitability and shareholder value. Market Penetration Incorporation will facilitate first market penetration as it is established, associated with more customers. I will have to incorporate the clinic with a hospital that has demonstrated successfully in separate markets such as pharmaceutical company in the State (Finkelstein & Cooper 2010). Disadvantages The only disadvantage I will have is that the incorporation/merger has to be approved by votes of the stockholders of each firm. Two-thirds of the share votes will be required for the approval. Although I have experience and a good reputation of successfully leading mergers and acquisitions of hospitals, the process of obtaining the required votes has always proved to be time-consuming and difficult. The cooperation of the stakeholders is not easily obtainable. The process of incorporation involves gathering votes from the stakeholders and the board members to determine those in support of the merger. If enough votes are gathered in support of the merges, then the transaction will be effected and the dissenting shareholders will be obliged to go along with the process of incorporation (Finkelstein & Cooper 2010). Feasibility Study Family and Child will start as a non profit organization of an already established nonprofit hospital. This sort of arrangement is referred as fiscal spons orship. Feasibility will help to determine whether time is convenient to launch the project. Public support is also a common characteristic for all non profits. Feasibility study will therefore determine whether the initiative has public support that is feasible. The key questions to be answered by the feasibility study include; Will the clinic intended merges support the initiative and the incorporation process? Is the wider community beneficiary of the initiative support the initiative to level that will make the initiative feasible? Time will then be spent to determine that the initiative will be sustainable (Judith, 2009). The feasibility will involve testing depth of the supporter’s commitment to the program. The propose clinic will be described to a reasonable list of p[potential supporters and careful analysis of their replies will make a sober assessment. A consultant who will interview staff from the clinic will do this. Board members, community leaders, top and pros pective donors will be interviewed. The consultant selected will be someone from the outside that not having any biased agenda but simply undertaking the fact-finding mission. People are more likely to tell a stranger both the affirmative and unenthusiastic aspects of the organization. They will be comfortable to genuinely express their feelings with a stranger rather than share them with the executive director or board member (Finkelstein & Cooper 2010). This term contract is made between the Family and Child clinic and; Personal Information 1. Name: 2. Date of Birth(mm/dd/yy): 3.

Idealism versus Naturalism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Idealism versus Naturalism - Essay Example Gombrich argues that in pursuit of idealism for self-interests, the artists omitted any feature to they did not like to produce ‘†¦an idealized statue that usually lack character and vigour’ (103). Moreover, their desire to portray the true, the good, and the beauty of a real a man - ideal humanistic outlook – resulted in a quite ‘symmetrical, well-built and beautiful statue.' Due to the flawed figures of idealism, Greek artists adopted the naturalist perspective that represents the human form in its natural appearance or realistic look. The proponents of naturalism argue that the idealistic idea was only to add aesthetic value to drawings and sculptures and avoid reality. For instance, in Hermes with Dionysus, Praxiteles portrays the natural gesture of a hairy, wise, loving, caring and anxious man with human quality carrying a playful child (Gombrich 102). Moreover, he curved a younger non-stiff body leaning on a post for balance while maintaining elegance and smooth surfaces. These are realistic features that contrast the idealistic principle of calm and ever-smiling man to reflect an ideal situation of harmony and happiness. Moreover, the height of 3.5 feet tall of the idealistic approach fails to reflect the proper size of a human, 6.9 feet as depicted by Praxiteles. Despite these differences, one similarity of the two approaches is the Contrapposto where the right leg is bent while stepping forward and the left hip elevated to support body weight.