Accounting and Finance Questions

A commercial bank is a type of financial institution that accepts deposits, offers checking account services, makes business, personal and mortgage loans, and offers basic financial products like certificates of deposit (CDs) and savings accounts to individuals and small businesses. A commercial bank is where most people do their banking, as opposed to an investment bank.

Commercial banks are funded through customer deposits. These banks make money by providing loans and earning interest income from those loans. The types of loans a commercial bank can issue vary and may include mortgages, auto loans, business loans and personal loans. A commercial bank may specialize in just one or a few types of loans.

Customers who deposit money into these accounts effectively lend money to the bank and are paid interest. However, the interest rate paid by the bank on money they borrow is less than the rate charged on money they lend.

An accounts receivable aging is a report that lists unpaid customer invoices and unused credit memos by date ranges. A typical aging report lists invoices in 30-day "buckets," where the left-most column contains all invoices that are 30 days old or less, the next column contains invoices that are 31-60 days old, the next column contains invoices that are 61-90 days old, and the final column contains all older invoices. The report is sorted by customer name, with all invoices for each customer itemized directly below the customer name, usually sorted by either invoice number or invoice date. A sample report follows, though without the individual invoice detail that is usually found in such a report:

Customer Name 

Total A/R 0-30

Days 31-60

Days 61-90

Days 90+

Days

Abercrombie $15,000 $10,000 $5,000 

Bufford Inc. 29,000 20,000 9,000 

Chesterton Co. 83,000 47,000 21,000 12,000 3,000

Denver Brothers 8,000 8,000

Totals $135,000 $57,000 $46,000 $21,000 $11,000

If the report is generated by an accounting software system (which is usually the case), then you can usually reconfigure the report for different date ranges. For example, if your payment terms are net 15 days, then the date range in the left-most column should only be for the first 15 days. This drops 16-day old invoices into the second column, which highlights that they are now overdue for payment.

The report primarily contains invoices, but it may also contain credit memos that have not been used by customers, or which have not yet been matched against an unpaid invoice.

The aging report is the primary tool used by collections personnel to determine which invoices are overdue for payment, and which therefore require them to contact customers. Given its use as a collection tool, the report may be configured to also contain contact information for each customer.

The aging report is also used as a tool for estimating potential bad debts, which are then used to revise the allowance for doubtful accounts. The usual method for doing so is to derive the historical percentage of invoice dollar amounts in each date range that usually become a bad debt, and apply these percentages to the column totals in the most recent aging report.

An additional use of the aging report is by the credit department, which can view the current payment status of any outstanding invoices to see if customer credit limits should be changed. This is not an ideal use of the report, since the credit department should also review invoices that have already been paid in the recent past. Nonetheless, the report does give a good indication of the near-term financial situation of customers.

The Accountant typically prepares the Bank Reconciliation Statement using all transactions.

Bank Reconciliation Statement :

Bank reconciliation is a process which prepares a statement accounting for the difference between the cash balance in the cash account of a company and the cash balance according to its bank statement. This statement can help a company to verify that its bank account ending balance per the bank matches the balance on hand per the company's general ledger.

The advantage of equity finance for a company – raising money by selling shares – is that this money does not have to be repaid. However, new shareholders usually get to have a say in how the company is run. Despite these rights, equity is often seen as a risky choice for investors as they will lose all their money if the company doesn’t prosper. If it does well, on the other hand, they may see their stake multiply in value many times over.

Debt finance – money raised through loans – must be repaid eventually by a company, usually with interest, but lenders won’t be able to exert as much influence as shareholders over how the company does business. The debt of a reliable company is usually seen as a safe investment, but fixed repayment schedules means that there are few opportunities for large returns.

‘Endorsing cheque’ ensures that the cheque get deposited into your account only. It minimizes the risk of theft. Normally, in endorsing cheque, the cashier will ask you to sign at the back of the cheque. The signature should match the payee. The image over here shows the endorsed cheque.

 From the customer point of view, credit is the amount which is deposited into her or his account. And debit refers to that amount which is taken from the account of the customer.

A foreign exchange rate is the price of the domestic currency stated in terms of another currency.