Markus United Inc., a soap manufacturing company, maintained strategic advantage over other companies by retaining profits in a unique way. The company bought a few distributors in order to improve efficiency and cut down transportation costs while distributing its products to retail stores. The company generated more profits than its competitors this way. This is an example of .

Fred smithers, a recent college graduate decided to open his own portable juice bar, smithers smoothies, to wheel around newport beach. you, a trusted friend of fred, are a business major that has also recently graduated and agreed to handle the books for a while to get some practical experience and have a favor that you can ask of fred in the future. given the following five transactions concerning the new venture, prepare the necessary journal entries for the transactions, post the journal entries to appropriate t accounts and prepare a trial balance as of the end of the month in order to answer to the necessary may 2: fred invests $12,000 of his own money to start the new company. this money was obtained from a part-time job working at a legal firm while he was in school. may 3: fred spent $5,100 cash to purchase a refrigerated trailer that he can pull behind his car and set up at the beach. under your advice, fred agrees to place the new asset under an account called "equipment." may 6: fred bought $640 of supplies on account from the flav-o-rite confectioners company. because they will last longer than a single accounting period fred agrees to record them as, "supplies" as per your suggestion. may 13: fred sat on the beach for six hours without a single sale and was feeling very down. right before he left, however, a plumber escorting his family reunion along the beach stopped by his stand and bought $800 worth of smoothies for the entire family. under your advice, fred agrees to call this cash revenue, "sales." may 15: excited about his new venture, fred withdraws $350 from the company to take his girlfriend out to dinner. what would be the balance in the cash account at the end of the period following the posting of all the transactions?

James is an employee in the widget inspection department of xyz systems, a government contractor. james was part of a 3-person inspection team that found a particular batch of widgets did not meet the exacting requirements of the u.s. government. in order to meet the tight deadline and avoid penalties under the contract, james' boss demanded that the batch of widgets be sent in fulfillment of the government contract. when james found out, he went to the vice president of the company and reported the situation. james was demoted by his boss, and no longer works on government projects. james has a:

You get your monthly banking statement and notice that the number is lower than expected. you decide that you should create a cash flow statement. why are cash flow statements useful in managing money? what are the steps in creating a statement?