Pre-Algebra > Me
25 08 09 - 13:59 Category: .
I'm working on an audit for a client that's a little funky. We're only auditing their April through December 2008 financials, not the entire year (the reason why is very convoluted). In order to get the right beginning values for their trial balance, I have to start with their full year end balances and then subtract the balance from January through March. Not that hard?So here I am, working in Excel when I get stuck. I'm looking at their revenue account, which has a credit (neg) balance* for Jan-March and year end (YE). In my head: "Wait... this won't work... If I subtract the Jan-March balance from the YE it'll just get more negative!"
So I'm staring at my Excel file trying to figure out how to create one formula that will subtract the positive YE from the positive Jan-March to give me the difference AND add the negative Jan-March to the negative YE to give me the proper difference there. Impossible, and I did not want to fill in each formula of this several-hundred account long trial balance one at a time.
Math is hard.**
*Revenue accounts are always negative balances and expense accounts are positive balances, go figure.
**Accountants deal with rules, not with math. The most intense I have to do is division and annuity tables.
A math book and accountants are foreign. I could keep a checkbook just fine using pos/neg math, but then you get your statement where everything is in crazy columns for withdrawl/deposit and it never works. I don’t think you can major in math and accounting! :)
Doug (Email) - 12-02-’09 22:31
And then there is me, prototyping 3D engines where I’m going to have to deal with 3D math and vectors.
I do have a 6th grade math textbook somewhere if you want to practice =p
Fiance (URL) - 12-02-’09 12:28