Balance Sheet
A statement listing a business's assets, liabilities, and net worth, or equity.

Base Adjustment
Adjustments made to the initial base level budget to reflect total base level funding available to the agency. The list of acceptable base level technical and policy adjustments are included in the biennial budget instructions. Adjustments are generally made on a technical or policy basis. Examples of technical adjustments are one-time appropriations and program sunsets. Examples of policy adjustments are salary increases and space rental changes.

Ledger
A physical collection of related financial information, such as revenues, expenditures, accounts receivable, and accounts payable.

Cash Letter
A group of checks accompanied by a paper listing sent to a clearinghouse, a Federal Reserve Bank, or another institution. A cash letter contains a number of negotiable items, mostly checks, accompanied by a letter that lists the amounts and instructions for transmittal to another bank. May also be called a transmittal letter.

Audit
A systematic review or examination of the assertions or actions of a third party to evaluate conformance to some norm or benchmark.

Accounting
term that refers to the overall process of tracking your business's income and expenses, and then using these numbers in various calculations and formulas to answer specific questions about the financial and tax status of the business.

Bad Debt
Money owed for a business debt that cannot be collected

Accrual Method Of Accounting
Accounts for income and expenses in the 12-month period earned or incurred, which is not necessarily when it is received or paid.

Double-Entry Accounting
A system of accounting that records each business transaction twice.

Blue Book
This is the term commonly used to describe the Government Finance Officers Association publication Governmental Accounting, Auditing and Financial Reporting. Initially, the blue book was the authoritative source for GAAP for state and local governments.