Bookkeeping is the recording of financial transactions, and is part of the process of accounting in business and other organizations. It involves preparing source documents for all transactions, operations, and other events of a business. Transactions include purchases, sales, receipts and payments by an individual person or an organization/corporation. There are several standard methods of bookkeeping, including the single-entry and double-entry bookkeeping systems. While these may be viewed as "real" bookkeeping, any process for recording financial transactions is a bookkeeping process.
Factoring is a financial transaction and a type of debtor finance in which a business sells its accounts receivable to a third party at a discount. A business will sometimes factor its receivable assets to meet its present and immediate cash needs. Forfaiting is a factoring arrangement used in international trade finance by exporters who wish to sell their receivables to a forfaiter. Factoring is commonly referred to as accounts receivable factoring, invoice factoring, and sometimes accounts receivable financing. Accounts receivable financing is a term more accurately used to describe a form of asset based lending against accounts receivable. The Commercial Finance Association is the leading trade association of the asset-based lending and factoring industries.
In the United States, a recess appointment is an appointment by the president of a federal official when the U.S. Senate is in recess. Under the U.S. Constitution's Appointments Clause, the president is empowered to nominate, and with the advice and consent (confirmation) of the Senate, make appointments to high-level policy-making positions in federal departments, agencies, boards, and commissions, as well as to the federal judiciary. A recess appointment under Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution is an alternative method of appointing officials that allows the temporary filling of offices during periods when the Senate is not in session. It was anticipated that the Senate would be away for months at a time, so the ability to fill vacancies in important positions when the Senate is in recess and unavailable to provide advice and consent was deemed essential to maintain government function, as described by Alexander Hamilton in No. 67 of The Federalist Papers.
Accounts receivable, abbreviated as AR or A/R, are legally enforceable claims for payment held by a business for goods supplied or services rendered that customers have ordered but not paid for. The accounts receivable process involves customer onboarding, invoicing, collections, deductions, exception management, and finally, cash posting after the payment is collected. These are generally in the form of invoices raised by a business and delivered to the customer for payment within an agreed time frame. Accounts receivable is shown in a balance sheet as an asset. It is one of a series of accounting transactions dealing with the billing of a customer for goods and services that the customer has ordered. These may be distinguished from notes receivable, which are debts created through formal legal instruments called promissory notes.
An invoice, bill or tab is a commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer relating to a sale transaction and indicating the products, quantities, and agreed-upon prices for products or services the seller had provided the buyer.
Prorogation in the Westminster system of government is the action of proroguing, or interrupting, a parliament, or the discontinuance of meetings for a given period of time, without a dissolution of parliament. The term is also used for the period of such a discontinuance between two legislative sessions of a legislative body.
A receipt is a document acknowledging that a person has received money or property in payment following a sale or other transfer of goods or provision of a service. All receipts must have the date of purchase on them. If the recipient of the payment is legally required to collect sales tax or VAT from the customer, the amount would be added to the receipt, and the collection would be deemed to have been on behalf of the relevant tax authority. In many countries, a retailer is required to include the sales tax or VAT in the displayed price of goods sold, from which the tax amount would be calculated at the point of sale and remitted to the tax authorities in due course. Similarly, amounts may be deducted from amounts payable, as in the case of taxes withheld from wages. On the other hand, tips or other gratuities that are given by a customer, for example in a restaurant, would not form part of the payment amount or appear on the receipt.
In a legislature, a special session is a period when the body convenes outside of the normal legislative session. This most frequently occurs in order to complete unfinished tasks for the year, such as outlining the government's budget for the next fiscal year, biennium, or other period. Special sessions may also be called during an economic downturn in order to cut the budget. In other cases, a special session may be convened to address special topics, or emergencies such as war or natural disaster.
The Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution outlines federal legislative procedure by which bills originating in Congress become federal law in the United States.
The Standing Rules of the Senate are the parliamentary procedures adopted by the United States Senate that govern its procedure. The Senate's power to establish rules derives from Article One, Section 5 of the United States Constitution: "Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings ..."
In financial accounting, a gain is when the market value of an asset exceeds the purchase price of that asset. The gain is unrealized until the asset is sold for cash, at which point it becomes a realized gain. This is an important distinction for tax purposes, as only realized gains are subject to tax. Gains are the result of circumstances, events, or transactions which affect the entity independent of revenue or owner investments. They are usually the result of holding gains, exchange transactions, events, or nonreciprocal transactions.
A legislative session is the period of time in which a legislature, in both parliamentary and presidential systems, is convened for purpose of lawmaking, usually being one of two or more smaller divisions of the entire time between two elections. In each country the procedures for opening, ending, and in between sessions differs slightly. A session may last for the full term of the legislature or the term may consist of a number of sessions. These may be of fixed duration, such as a year, or may be used as a parliamentary procedural device. A session of the legislature is brought to an end by an official act of prorogation. In either event, the effect of prorogation is generally the clearing of all outstanding matters before the legislature.
Bills C-1 and S-1 are pro forma bills introduced in the House of Commons and Senate respectively at the opening of each session of the Parliament of Canada. The bills are given a first reading and are then never proceeded with further. Being pro forma pieces of legislation, introducing them is mostly a formal tradition. They are introduced each session in the Commons and Senate for the purpose of reasserting the right of Members to depart from the reasons for summoning Parliament contained in the Speech from the Throne and to proceed with such business before considering the Speech, therefore signifying Parliament's freedom from the direction of the Crown of Canada.
In bookkeeping, accounting, and financial accounting, net sales are operating revenues earned by a company for selling its products or rendering its services. Also referred to as revenue, they are reported directly on the income statement as Sales or Net sales.
A lame-duck session of Congress in the United States occurs whenever one Congress meets after its successor is elected, but before the successor's term begins. The expression is now used not only for a special session called after a sine die adjournment, but also for any portion of a regular session that falls after an election. In current practice, any meeting of Congress after election day, but before the next Congress convenes the following January, is a lame-duck session. Prior to 1933, when the 20th Amendment changed the dates of the congressional term, the last regular session of Congress was always a lame-duck session.
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress. The United States Senate and the lower chamber of Congress, the United States House of Representatives, comprise the federal bicameral legislature of the United States. Together, the Senate and the House maintain authority under Article One of the U.S. Constitution to pass or defeat federal legislation. The Senate has exclusive power to confirm U.S. presidential appointments, approve or reject treaties, and try cases of impeachment brought by the House. The Senate and the House provide a check and balance on the powers of the executive and judicial branches of government.
Procedures of the United States Congress are established ways of doing legislative business. Congress has two-year terms with one session each year. There are rules and procedures, often complex, which guide how it converts ideas for legislation into laws.
Kathryn "Kathy" Ruemmler is an attorney who formerly served as Principal Deputy White House Counsel and then White House Counsel to President Barack Obama. Previously a partner at Latham and Watkins co-chairing its white-collar defense group, Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs in 2020 as a Partner and Global Head of Regulatory Affairs. In 2021, she was promoted to Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel.
Russian Accounting Standards (RAS; Russian: Российские стандарты бухгалтерского учёта, РСБУ), also called Russian Accounting Principles (RAP) or Russian GAAP or GAAP (Russia), refer to the body of regulatory documents concerning financial accounting and reporting standards in the Russian Federation.
National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, 573 U.S. 513 (2014), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously ruled that the President of the United States cannot use his authority under the Recess Appointment Clause of the United States Constitution to appoint public officials unless the United States Senate is in recess and not able to transact Senate business. The Court held that the clause allows the president to make appointments during both intra-session and inter-session recesses but only if the recess is of sufficient length, and if the Senate is actually unavailable for deliberation, thereby limiting future recess appointments. The Court also ruled that any office vacancy can be filled during the recess, regardless of when it arose. The case arose out of President Barack Obama's appointments of Sharon Block, Richard Griffin, and Terence Flynn to the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
