4 ms·

And how about food? I can understand a book having a resale value I keep in my books, but once I've eaten the hot-dog I bought it is gone forever.

chimeracoder 2y ago
> And how about food? I can understand a book having a resale value I keep in my books, but once I've eaten the hot-dog I bought it is gone forever. Perishable and consumable food wouldn't be counted as an asset in the first place. You spend the money - it's credited to your asset account (reducing the value of your cash-in-hand) and then debited from your expense account (reducing the value of your equity - or, in more layperson's lingo, increasing the total sum of the expenses you incurred during that period).
- eviks 2y ago
  Of course it would be, asset is anything of value, you're confusing with subtypes of assets. Just mujhe liability is anything you owe regardless of for how long
  - chimeracoder 2y ago
    > Of course it would be, asset is anything of value, you're confusing with subtypes of assets. Just mujhe liability is anything you owe regardless of for how long If an office buys snacks on Monday for the office party on Friday, they're not counting it as an asset and depreciating it on their books. If food production or delivery were part of the core business, it would be one thing, but in the context that OP's talking about, it would be overkill at best (and fraudulent, in extreme cases) to try and count a transient consumable as an asset on their books.
    - eviks 2y ago
      Depreciation isn't relevant here, again, you're confused in the types of assets, not all of them are depreciated, only some with some specific properties like time of expected user. Just read the definition of assets in any (accounting) dictionary, or try to record your snack purchase in real accounts and see which side of the balance sheet this account end up in (hint: inventories, assets).
      - chimeracoder 2y ago
        > or try to record your snack purchase in real accounts and see which side of the balance sheet this account end up in (hint: inventories, assets). Yeah, and as I said, this makes sense for a company for which food is a relevant part of their business, but in the context OP is asking about, nobody is tracking it this way.
      - renewiltord 2y ago
        Do you actually do that? When people are working late at the office and you order pizzas you put that into your inventory and then remove it as people consume the pizzas? I record that into a separate operating expenses account meant for this kind of fringe benefit, not into inventory. Pretty small so I do the accounting as well, but I think I'd lose my mind if I had to record them into inventory. Then when they leave half the pizzas for the next day, I record that? No way.
        eviks 2y ago
        you don't need to record the halves, nothing stops your pizza order to be automatically recordered as -A_cash +A_inventory -A_inventory + L_expenses Sure, if your pizza is frozen and consumed in another period, your books will not reflect reality, but so what, when talking about the very basics of accounting you offset that misrepresentation of a simple example by gaining an important pedagogic benefit! Which one, though? What do you gain by denying that pizza is an asset, going so far as calling recognition of an asset as an asset a fraud (but only in extreme cases of 5 pizzas!) and bringing depreciation/core business in?
        renewiltord 2y ago
        Perhaps this is obvious to you, but I don't see what I'm gaining by doing this. My inventory management system will have different things unless I'm also recording these pizzas in there for the day. And it will show my inventory valuation as fluctuating when I do things like lunch or dinner for the team. It really seems useless to me when running the business.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

chimeracoder 2y ago

> And how about food? I can understand a book having a resale value I keep in my books, but once I've eaten the hot-dog I bought it is gone forever. Perishable and consumable food wouldn't be counted as an asset in the first place. You spend the money - it's credited to your asset account (reducing the value of your cash-in-hand) and then debited from your expense account (reducing the value of your equity - or, in more layperson's lingo, increasing the total sum of the expenses you incurred during that period).

eviks 2y ago
Of course it would be, asset is anything of value, you're confusing with subtypes of assets. Just mujhe liability is anything you owe regardless of for how long
- chimeracoder 2y ago
  > Of course it would be, asset is anything of value, you're confusing with subtypes of assets. Just mujhe liability is anything you owe regardless of for how long If an office buys snacks on Monday for the office party on Friday, they're not counting it as an asset and depreciating it on their books. If food production or delivery were part of the core business, it would be one thing, but in the context that OP's talking about, it would be overkill at best (and fraudulent, in extreme cases) to try and count a transient consumable as an asset on their books.
  - eviks 2y ago
    Depreciation isn't relevant here, again, you're confused in the types of assets, not all of them are depreciated, only some with some specific properties like time of expected user. Just read the definition of assets in any (accounting) dictionary, or try to record your snack purchase in real accounts and see which side of the balance sheet this account end up in (hint: inventories, assets).
    - chimeracoder 2y ago
      > or try to record your snack purchase in real accounts and see which side of the balance sheet this account end up in (hint: inventories, assets). Yeah, and as I said, this makes sense for a company for which food is a relevant part of their business, but in the context OP is asking about, nobody is tracking it this way.
    - renewiltord 2y ago
      Do you actually do that? When people are working late at the office and you order pizzas you put that into your inventory and then remove it as people consume the pizzas? I record that into a separate operating expenses account meant for this kind of fringe benefit, not into inventory. Pretty small so I do the accounting as well, but I think I'd lose my mind if I had to record them into inventory. Then when they leave half the pizzas for the next day, I record that? No way.
      - eviks 2y ago
        you don't need to record the halves, nothing stops your pizza order to be automatically recordered as -A_cash +A_inventory -A_inventory + L_expenses Sure, if your pizza is frozen and consumed in another period, your books will not reflect reality, but so what, when talking about the very basics of accounting you offset that misrepresentation of a simple example by gaining an important pedagogic benefit! Which one, though? What do you gain by denying that pizza is an asset, going so far as calling recognition of an asset as an asset a fraud (but only in extreme cases of 5 pizzas!) and bringing depreciation/core business in?
        renewiltord 2y ago
        Perhaps this is obvious to you, but I don't see what I'm gaining by doing this. My inventory management system will have different things unless I'm also recording these pizzas in there for the day. And it will show my inventory valuation as fluctuating when I do things like lunch or dinner for the team. It really seems useless to me when running the business.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]