measuring income to assess performance

© 2006 Prentice Hall Business Publishing Introduction to Financial Accounting, 9/e © 2006 Prentice Hall Business Publishing Introduction to Financial Accounting, 9/e Horngren/Sundem/Elliott/Philbrick

Measuring Income to Assess

Performance

CHAPTER

2


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Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, you should be able to

1. Explain how accountants measure income

2. Determine when a company should record revenue from a sale

3. Use the concept of matching to record the expenses for a period

4. Prepare an income statement and show how it is related to a balance sheet


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Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, you should be able to

5. Account for cash dividends and prepare a statement of retained earnings

6. Explain how the following concepts affect financial statements: entity, reliability, going concern, materiality, cost-benefit, and stable monetary unit

7. Compute and explain earnings per share, price-earnings ratio, dividend-yield ratio, and dividend-payout ratio

8. Explain how accounting regulators trade off relevance and reliability in setting accounting standards


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Measuring Income

• Income is a measure of the increase in the “wealth” of an entity over a period of time

• Accountants have agreed on a common set of rules for measuring income and wealth

• Income is generated primarily through the operating cycle


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Operating Cycle

Starts withCash

$100,000

Starts withCash

$100,000

MerchandiseInventory $100,000

MerchandiseInventory $100,000

AccountsReceivable$160,000

AccountsReceivable$160,000

Buys Merchandise Sells Merchandise

Collects Cash


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The Accounting Time Period

• Companies measure their performance over discrete time periods

• The calendar year is the most common time period for measuring income or profits

• About 40% of large companies use a fiscal year that differs from a calendar year


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The Accounting Time Period

• The fiscal year-end date is often the low point in annual activity when inventories can be counted more easily

• Companies also prepare financial statements for interim periods

• Interim periods may be for a month or a quarter (3-month period)


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Revenues and Expenses

• Revenues and expenses are the key inflows and outflows of assets that occur during a business’s operating cycle

• Revenues are the amount of assets received in exchange for the delivery of goods or services to customers

• Expenses are measures of the assets that a company gives up or consumes in order to deliver goods or services to a customer


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• Income is the excess of revenues over expenses

• Profits or earnings are common synonyms for income

• Retained earnings is the total cumulative equity generated by income


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Sales on open account for the entire month of January amount to $160,000. The cost of the inventory sold is $100,000

Assets = Liabilities + Owners’ Equity

Accounts Receivable Merchandise Inventory Retained Earnings

Sales +160,000 = +160,000 (sales revenues)

Cost ofinventorysold -100,000 = -100,000 (cost of goods sold expenses)


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• Accounts receivable are the amounts owed by customers as a result of delivering goods or services on account in the ordinary course of business

• Cost of goods sold expense is the original acquisition cost of the inventory that a company sells to customers during the reporting period


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Accrual Basis and Cash Basis

• The accrual basis recognizes the impact of transactions in the financial statements for the time periods when revenues and expenses occur

• Accountants record revenue as a company earns it, and they record expenses as the company incurs them


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Accrual Basis and Cash Basis

• The cash basis recognizes the impact of transactions in the financial statements only when a company receives or pays cash

• The accrual basis is the best basis for measuring economic performance


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Recognition of Revenues

• Revenues are recognized when they

– Are earned• A company earns revenues when it delivers goods

or services to customers– And are realized

• A company realizes revenues when it receives cash or claims to cash in exchange for goods or services


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Matching

• There are two kinds of expenses in every accounting period:

– Product costs are those linked with the revenues earned that period

– Period costs are those linked with the time period itself

• Matching occurs when the expenses incurred in a period are matched to the revenues generated in the same period


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Applying Matching

• Depreciation is the systematic allocation of the acquisition cost of long-lived assets to the periods that benefit from the use of the assets

• Land is not subject to depreciation because it does not deteriorate over time


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Applying Matching

The following transaction records depreciation expense

Assets = Liabilities + Owners’ Equity

Store Equipment = Retained Earnings

Recognize depreciationexpense -100 = -100 (increase depreciation expense)


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Applying Matching

• We can account for the purchases and uses of goods and services in two basic steps:

– The acquisition of the assets– The expiration of the assets as expenses

• Expense accounts are deductions from stockholders’ equity


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Recognition of Expired Assets

Assets(Unexpired costs,

such as Inventory, Prepaid Rent, Equipment)

Assets(Unexpired costs,

such as Inventory, Prepaid Rent, Equipment)

Expenses(Expired costs,

such as Cost of Goods Sold, Rent, Depreciation,

Other Expenses)

Expenses(Expired costs,

such as Cost of Goods Sold, Rent, Depreciation,

Other Expenses)

Acquisition Expiration

InstantaneouslyOr Eventually

Become


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Expanded Balance Sheet Equation

(1) Assets = Liabilities + Stockholders’ Equity

(2) Assets = Liabilities + Paid-in Capital + Retained Earnings

(3) Assets = Liabilities + Paid-in Capital + Revenues - Expenses


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Expanded Balance Sheet Equation

• The income statement collects all the changes in owners’ equity for the accounting period and combines them in one place

• Revenue and expense accounts are nothing more than subdivisions of stockholders’ equity – temporary stockholders’ equity accounts


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The Income Statement

• An income statement is a report of all revenues and expenses pertaining to a specific time period

• Net income = revenues minus all expenses

• A net loss occurs if expenses exceed revenues


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Relationship Between Income Statement and Balance Sheet

• A balance sheet shows the financial position of the company at a discrete point in time

• An income statement explains the changes that take place between those points in time


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Relationship Between Income Statement and Balance Sheet

Balance SheetDecember 31

20X1

Balance SheetJanuary 31

20X2

Balance SheetFebruary 28

20X2

Balance SheetMarch 31

20X2

IncomeStatement

For January

IncomeStatement

For February

IncomeStatementFor March

Time Time

Income Statement for Quarter Ended March 31, 20X2


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Cash Dividends

• Cash dividends

– Are distributions of some of the company’s assets (cash) to stockholders

– Reduce Cash and Retained Earnings– Are not expenses—they are transactions with

stockholders


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Cash Dividends

Cash dividends of $50,000 are disbursed to stockholders

Assets = Liabilities + Stockholders’ Equity

Cash = Retained Earnings

Declaration andpayment of cashdividends -50,000 = -50,000 (dividends)


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Cash Dividends

• A cash dividend involves three important dates:

– Declaration date—the date on which the board declares the dividend

– Record date—stockholders owning the stock on this date receive the dividend

– Payment date—the date on which the corporation pays the dividend


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Retained Earnings and Cash

• In order to pay a cash dividend, a corporation needs

– Cash– Retained Earnings

• Cash and Retained Earnings are two entirely separate accounts, sharing no necessary relationship

• Retained earnings is a residual claim, not a pot of gold


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Statement of Retained Earnings

• The statement of retained earnings consists of the

• A net loss (negative net income) is subtracted from the beginning balance of retained earnings

• Negative retained earnings is called an accumulated deficit

Beginning balance+ Addition of net income- Deduction of dividends= Ending balance


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Retained earnings, January 31, 20X2Add: Net income for FebruaryTotalLess: Dividends declaredRetained earnings, February 28, 20X2

$ 57,900 63,900$121,800 50,000$ 71,800

• Some companies add the statement of retained earnings to the bottom of the income statement

• The next slide shows a combined statement of income and retained earnings


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SalesDeduct expenses: Cost of goods sold $110,000 Rent 2,000 Depreciation 100Net incomeRetained earnings, January 31, 20X2TotalLess: Dividends declaredRetained earnings, February 28, 20X2

$176,000

112,100$ 63,900 57,900$121,800 50,000$ 71,800


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• Note how the combined statement of income and retained earnings is anchored to the balance sheet equation

Assets = Liabilities + Paid-in Capital + Retained earnings

[Beginning balance + Revenues - Expenses - Dividends] [57,900 + 176,000 - 112,100 - $50,000]

Ending Retained Earnings Balance = $71,800


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The Entity Concept

• An accounting entity is an organization that stands apart from other organizations and individuals as a separate economic unit

• Personal transactions are not recorded by a business entity


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The Reliability Concept

• Reliability is the quality of information that assures decision makers that the information captures the conditions or events it purports to represent

• Reliable data can be verified by independent auditors

• Only certain types of events can be reliably recorded as accounting transactions


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Going Concern Convention

• The going concern (continuity) convention is the assumption that an entity will continue to exist indefinitely

• For a going concern, it is reasonable to

– Use historical cost to record long-lived assets– Report liabilities at the amount to be paid at maturity


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Materiality Convention

• The materiality convention asserts that an item should be included in a financial statement if its omission or misstatement would tend to mislead the reader of the financial statements under consideration

• Many acquisitions that a company theoretically should record as assets are immediately written off as expenses because they are not material


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Cost-Benefit Criterion

• The cost-benefit criterion states that a system should be changed when the expected additional benefits of the change exceed its expected additional costs

• The FASB safeguards the cost-effectiveness of its standards by

– Assuring that a standard does not impose costs on the many for the benefit of a few

– Seeking alternative ways of handling an issue that are less costly and only slightly less efficient


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Stable Monetary Unit

• The ability to use historical cost accounting depends on a stable monetary unit

• A stable monetary unit is one that is not expected to change in value significantly over time

• With low levels of inflation, changes in the value of the monetary unit do not hinder accounting rules


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Earnings Per Share (EPS)

• EPS tells investors how much of a period’s net income “belongs to” each share of common stock

• Investors should predict a company’s future EPS before deciding whether to buy the company’s common shares

Net Income

Average number of shares outstandingEPS =


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Price-Earnings (P-E) Ratio

• The P-E ratio measures how much the investing public is willing to pay for a chance to share the company’s potential earnings

• A high P-E ratio indicates that investors predict the company’s net income will grow rapidly

Market price per share of common stock

Earnings per share of common stockP-E Ratio =


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Dividend-Yield Ratio

• The dividend-yield ratio gauges dividend payouts

• Investors in common stock who seek regular cash returns of their investments pay particular attention to dividend-yield ratios

Current market price of stock

Common dividends per shareDividend-Yield Ratio =


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Dividend-Payout Ratio

• The dividend-payout ratio shows what proportion of net income a company elects to pay in cash dividends to its shareholders

• Many companies elect to pay a reasonably constant dollar amount in dividends, even if this means variations in its dividend-payout ratio

Common dividends per share

Earnings per shareDividend-Payout Ratio =


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Cost-Benefit Criterion and Accounting Regulation

• Accounting information is

– A benefit or economic good– Costly to produce

• The FASB and the IASB must choose rules whose decision-making benefits exceed their costs


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Aspects of Decision Usefulness

• Relevance and reliability are the two main qualities that make accounting information useful for decision making

• Reliability is a quality of information that captures the conditions or events it purports to represent

• Relevance refers to whether the information makes a difference to the decision maker


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• Accounting is filled with trade-offs between relevance and reliability

• Historical cost is reliable, but not very relevant

• The current value of land is more relevant than historical cost, but estimates of the current value are subjective and may not be reliable


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• For information to be relevant, it must help decision makers predict the outcomes of future events (predictive value) or confirm or update past predictions (feedback value)

• Relevant information must also be available on a timely basis


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• Reliability is characterized by verifiability for objectivity, neutrality, and validity

• Verifiability means that information can be checked to make sure it is correct

• Validity (also called representational faithfulness) means the information provided represents the events or objects it is supposed to represent


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• Neutrality, or freedom from bias, means that information is objective and is not weighted unfairly

• Comparability requires all companies to use similar concepts and measurements

• Consistency requires conformity within a company from period to period with unchanging policies and procedures


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PredictiveValue

PredictiveValue

Feedback Value

Feedback Value

TimelinessTimeliness

RelevanceRelevance

ConsistencyConsistency

DecisionUsefulness

DecisionUsefulness

ComparabilityComparability

ReliabilityReliability

VerifiabilityVerifiability

NeutralityNeutrality

ValidityValidity

measuring income to assess performance

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