Week 10 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 10 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 65–73 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–20 min total)

• Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable — The Finance Storyteller
• Allowance for Doubtful Accounts Explained — Business Lab at Home
• Bad debt: accounting practices — Wikipedia

① What customers owe, and when it is late

Chapter 10, Section “Tell accounts receivable from notes receivable” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Accounts and notes receivable” · Remember: a receivable is a claim on cash a customer has not paid yet, not cash in hand.

• Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable — The Finance Storyteller — a short explainer that defines accounts receivable as invoices to customers that they have not paid yet, shows where receivables sit on the balance sheet, and walks the entries for a sale on account and its collection; it also names the other titles you may meet, such as trade receivables and debtors. Use it while completing the Week-10 module overview. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
• Late commercial payments: charging interest and debt recovery — GOV.UK — the UK government's page on when a business customer's payment counts as late, with the default rule that a payment is late 30 days after the invoice or the delivery; it describes UK law, not U.S. rules, but it shows why the age of a bill is something a business tracks. (reading, 2–3 min)

② Two methods, and the allowance between them

Chapter 10, Section “Compare the direct write-off and allowance methods” · Session 1, Segment 2, “The direct write-off and allowance methods” · Remember: the direct write-off method records the expense when an account is given up, and the allowance method estimates it in the period of the sales.

• A Comparison of the Direct Write-off and Allowance Methods for Accounting for Bad Debts — Learning with Luke — the timing difference between the two methods, then one invented company's 2,000-dollar write-off and its surprise recovery worked under each method, with the two-entry recovery explained; the video frames the methods as advantages and disadvantages, so read it as a list of effects, and note that its estimate uses a percentage of sales where the chapter uses an aging schedule. This builds on Week 4's work with adjusting entries. (video, 10 min) (captions: automatic)
• Allowance for Doubtful Accounts Explained — Business Lab at Home — a plain walk through the three entries the chapter teaches: recording bad debt expense against Allowance for Doubtful Accounts, writing off a customer, and reversing the write-off before recording the cash when a customer pays after all; it calls the allowance a contra asset and explains why its credit balance lowers total assets. It speaks of setting the estimate at the beginning of the year, where the chapter makes it at the period's end. (video, 10 min) (captions: automatic)
• Bad debt: accounting practices — Wikipedia — the encyclopedia's section on the two methods and on reporting receivables at net realizable value, with a small example of gross and net receivables; one sentence says write-offs are taken as an expense from the allowance, so compare it with the chapter, where a write-off under the allowance method records no expense. (reading, 4–6 min)

③ Aging the receivables

Chapter 10, Section “Estimate the allowance with an aging schedule” · Session 2, Segment 3, “The aging schedule” · Remember: older receivables get higher percentages, and the schedule's total is the balance the allowance should have.

• Aging of Receivables — Katheryn Reynolds — an aging example with its own percentages for each group, followed by the step the chapter calls filling the allowance to its required balance, where bad debt expense is backed into from the allowance's starting balance; the video calls the account Allowance for Uncollectible Accounts, and one sentence calls the allowance's ending balance the net realizable value, which in the chapter is receivables minus the allowance. Its remark that the aging method is the most accurate estimate is the video's own view. (video, 10 min) (captions: automatic)
• What is an Accounts Receivable Aging Report? — FitSmallBusiness — a small business's aging report in accounting software, sorted into 30-day columns, and how an owner uses each column to send reminders and collection letters; stop before its closing advice on which bad-debt method to use and on taxes, because this course compares the methods by their effects and gives no tax advice. Stop here before long-lived assets; next week takes them up. (video, 12 min) (captions: automatic)

④ Notes and their interest

Chapter 10, Section “Compute simple interest on a note receivable” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Notes receivable and simple interest” · Remember: interest equals face times the annual rate times the fraction of a year the note runs.

• How To Calculate Simple Interest (Using Years, Months, Days) Explained — Whats Up Dude — a ninety-second explainer of the simple-interest formula, interest equals principal times rate times time, worked for a 1,000-dollar loan at 11 percent a year for 2 years: 220 dollars of interest and 1,220 dollars to repay. It closes by pointing to more examples in days and months on screen; the chapter's 3-month note uses the same formula with the time written as 3⁄12 of a year. Its figures are the video's own. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)
• What is the difference between a loan interest rate and the APR? — Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the federal consumer agency's short answer on what an interest rate is, the cost of borrowing on top of the principal, and how the APR adds fees; it is written for a borrower, so read it from the other side, as the shop is the lender when it holds a note. (reading, 3–4 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business: Bad Debts — Internal Revenue Service — the IRS's guide, deep-linked to its Bad Debts section; read the opening part on uncollectible accounts and notes receivable and the note on recovering a bad debt to see the same ideas in tax rules, and skip the special cases, which this course does not teach and which are not advice. (reading, 8–12 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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