Numbers dressed up in fancy suits pretending to be words.
The accounting equivalent of 'it's building up whether you like it or not'—when money, benefits, or consequences accumulate over time like interest or regret. It's the gradual increase that happens in the background while you're not paying attention, eventually becoming a number on a financial statement. The reason your vacation days or debt mysteriously grow without you doing anything.
The accounting principle that recognizes revenue when earned and expenses when incurred, not when cash actually changes hands—because accountants live in a theoretical world where money is real even when it's not. It's how companies can show profit while being cash-poor, a magical concept that keeps CFOs employed. The opposite of cash accounting, and infinitely more confusing.
An accounting method that records revenues and expenses when they're earned or incurred, not when cash actually changes hands. It's the difference between promising to pay someone and actually opening your wallet.
The financial equivalent of a surprise inspection where someone with a calculator and a suspicious mind examines your records to ensure you're not committing creative accounting. It's an independent review of financial statements, controls, and compliance that either confirms everything's fine or ruins everyone's year. The word alone can make CFOs break into a cold sweat.
Money customers owe you—the invoices you're desperately hoping will actually get paid.
A financial wizard who makes money by exploiting price differences across markets, basically the sophisticated cousin of the person who buys concert tickets cheap and sells them expensive. They're the reason your economics professor kept going on about market efficiency being impossible. Investment banks love them; everyone else thinks they're basically legalized scalpers in suits.
Wall Street shorthand for arbitrage, the art of buying low in one market and selling high in another while everyone else is too slow to notice the price difference. It's basically legal financial alchemy practiced by traders who've figured out how to profit from inefficiencies before algorithms do it faster. The dream job for people who think finding a quarter on the sidewalk is exciting, except scaled up to millions of dollars and requiring a Bloomberg terminal.
A financial product that promises to pay you regular amounts of money over time, typically used by retirees who want to convert their life savings into a predictable income stream instead of one terrifying lump sum. Insurance companies love selling these because they get to hold your money and invest it while doling it back to you in installments, ideally outliving you so they keep the remainder. It's basically the reverse of a loan: you give them money now, and they give it back slowly, assuming the fine print doesn't contain seventeen escape clauses.
Anything you own that's worth actual money or could theoretically be converted into money, from real estate to that dusty server in the corner. In business, it's the good side of your balance sheet that makes you look solvent. In intelligence work, it refers to human sources—actual people feeding you information—which is a wildly different but equally valuable definition.
A running tally of financial transactions that banks use to track your money and accountants use to justify their existence. It's essentially a ledger of debits, credits, and regrets, whether it's your checking account or a statement explaining why the project went over budget. In broader terms, it's any formal explanation or justification for actions taken.
To claim something exclusively as your own or to officially set funds/resources aside for a specific purpose—basically 'calling dibs' with legal authority.
Money your company owes to vendors and suppliers—basically an IOU list that keeps accountants awake at night.
To gather, pile up, or grow larger over time—whether it's wealth building your portfolio or technical debt building your migration backlog.
A data wizard who calculates the probability of catastrophe and puts a price tag on it—essentially a professional pessimist armed with spreadsheets who determines insurance premiums and pension obligations.
A cost you've incurred but haven't paid for yet—basically expenses you owe but haven't got the bill for.
A category of investments with similar characteristics—so you can group your terrible decisions into tidy portfolios.
The bookkeeper's favorite white lie—spreading a gigantic debt or capital expense across multiple years so nobody has to stare directly at the fiscal crater you just created. Whether you're slowly drowning in a mortgage or pretending that expensive software will somehow stay useful until you've paid it off, amortisation is the art of making financial pain installment-friendly.
A financial product converting your lump sum into predictable smaller payments—essentially trading 'access to real money now' for 'existential inflation anxiety spread across decades.'
When an asset's value drops permanently, you must write it down on the books. It's accounting's way of admitting you bought something that's now worthless, usually after several years of pretending it wasn't.