#accounting-basics
Foundational accounting concepts, terminology, and principles for small business owners
The quick ratio (acid-test ratio) strips inventory and prepaid expenses from current assets to test whether cash, receivables, and marketable securities alone can cover current liabilities. Includes the formula, a worked example where a 2.5 current ratio hides a 1.0 quick ratio, industry benchmarks, and the aged-receivables blind spot.
Contribution margin is sales revenue minus variable costs — the per-unit number that drives pricing, break-even analysis, and product-mix decisions. Learn the formula, how it differs from gross margin, common calculation mistakes, and typical ratios by industry (70–90% for software, 25–50% for manufacturing).
NAR's $52.25 million Tuccori settlement, approved April 10, 2026, doesn't change buyer-agent commission rules — it makes the August 2024 Sitzer/Burnett practice changes permanent, so agents must book gross commission across multiple funding sources rather than treating deposits as a single income line.
Throughput accounting reduces business decisions to three numbers — throughput, investment, and operating expense — and argues that only fixing the single binding constraint, not cutting costs everywhere, increases how much money a business actually makes.
Private school tuition is an exchange transaction under ASC 606, not a donation, so tuition collected before the school year starts must be booked as deferred revenue and recognized ratably over 10 or 12 months, while donor-restricted gifts follow separate ASC 958 rules.
Real estate agents should record gross commission and brokerage splits as separate line items, not just the net deposit, because the IRS matches Schedule C income against the gross figure brokerages report on Form 1099-NEC.
Under ASC 606, white-label SaaS resellers recognize either gross revenue as a principal or net commission as an agent, and should book gross sales, platform fees, refunds, and chargebacks as separate line items rather than a single net deposit.
A coworking space earns revenue across five distinct streams and must defer prepaid membership revenue, allocate CAM charges, and split costs by square footage to accurately price hot desks against private offices.
Cat cafes run three distinct revenue streams — lounge admission, food and beverage, and pass-through pet adoption fees — that need separate accounting treatment because admission is often non-taxable, F&B is taxable, and adoption fees legally belong to the rescue partner as a liability, not cafe revenue.
Franchisees must capitalize the initial franchise fee as a Section 197 intangible asset and amortize it straight-line over 15 years (180 months), calculate royalties against the FDD's exact gross sales definition, and record advertising fund contributions as a pass-through liability rather than a discretionary marketing expense.
Board game cafes blend three businesses — admission fees, food and beverage, and retail — and each needs its own revenue and COGS account; the game library itself should be capitalized and depreciated over 3-5 years, not expensed, while shrink-wrapped retail copies stay inventory.
Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO) measures the average number of days it takes a business to sell through its inventory, calculated as average inventory divided by cost of goods sold, multiplied by the number of days in the period.
