Minnie A. Wright-Hoff works as an accountant for Double Entry Doors, Inc. Her company sells and installs oversized garage doors needed by large vehicles. Most of Minnie’s work involves helping department heads and other decision makers by measuring and reporting costs for their departments, and by identifying areas where departments are exceeding their budgets. However, as one of only three accountants employed by Double Entry Doors, Minnie is something of a “jill-of-all-trades” in terms of her accounting assignments. For example, she recently spent several hours summarizing all of the financial data in account ledgers to see if the information was correct and balanced. Her efforts revealed no problems, so she is now ready to start working on the firm’s financial statements. Minnie is interested in this part of the accounting cycle because she likes to be one of the first to know the “bottom line” her company will report. She knows that she and the other accountants who work on these statements can influence the results by the choices they make about the way they report certain items.
The last major task Minnie completed before getting ready to prepare the firm’s financial statements was the preparation of the
