Common practice for start/end date of balance sheet
One's paycheck typically has a YTD (year to date) number that will end on the latest check of the year. I am paid bi-weekly, and my first 2012 check was for work 12/25 - 1/7. So, for my own balance sheet, brokerage statements and stock valuations end 12/31, but my pay ended 12/24. And then a new sheet starts.
1.) There is no logic in this question, because when there is an increase in net income for the year it will be in the form of something, ie it can be cash and cash equivalent like cash in hand or cash at bank. So as your ques says if there is increase in net income of 20 then asset side also increase by 20(cash) which makes the equation  Asset = liability + share capital tally 2.) Balance sheet is a statement of assets, liabilities, and capital of a business or other organization. Expenditure or income related items wont come under balance sheet it comes under profit and loss account 3.) Stockholders' equity can increase just as easy. When a firm issues bonus to the existing share holders from free reserve a/c or capital redemption reserve a/c or security premium this will increase the share holders equity and also decreases the reserve a/c The closest I can think of from the back of my head is http://finviz.com/map.ashx, which display a nice map and allows for different intervals. It has different scopes (S&P500, ETFs, World), but does not allow for specific date ranges, though. Unless you're running a self-employed business with a significant turnover (more than £150k), you are entitled to use cash basis accounting for your tax return, which means you would put the date of transactions as the payment date rather than the billing date or the date a debt is incurred. For payments which have a lag, e.g. a cheque that needs to be paid in or a bank transfer that takes a few days, you might also need to choose between multiple payment dates, e.g. when you initiated the payment or when it took effect. You can pick one as long as you're consistent: You can choose how you record when money is received or    paid (eg the date the money enters your account or the date a cheque   is written) but you must use the same method each tax year. "When using Time Value of Money equations, you need to know when the flow starts. A mortgage for example, has a first payment at the end of the first time period, usually 1 month.  For savings, one can start the account with a deposit of course, or start by saying ""I will deposit $XXX at the end of each month.  The answer really depends on the exact details of the situation. In your example, I'm inclined to suggest first flow is 1 year out." This is in the balance sheet, but the info is not usually that detailed. It is safe to assume that at least some portion of the cash/cash equivalents will be in liquid bonds. You may find more specific details in the company SEC filings (annual reports etc). Most credit cards will allow you to pick the closing date. In fact almost every bill with the exception of utilities that collected usage by reading a meter at the house will either let you pick the closing date each month, or at least have several to pick from. They won't let you pick the length, but they will let you pick the day of the month. When I worked a job that paid once a month. I wanted all my bills due early in the month: get paid, pay bill, know how much I have left. When I went back to every other week spreading them out made more sense. No credit card had a problem with this. The transitional cycle was not the correct length, but after that it was fine. As Dheer pointed out extending the cycle to 90 days would involve them extending credit for much longer than they would be comfortable. Also the goal of keeping utilization under 30% would be very difficult, you would have to keep your spending per month to less than 10% of your credit limit. Some people have trouble not falling behind on credit card bills, having to set aside the money to pay the bill every 90 day may be way to tough for many people. In India, in the money options get exercised automatically at the end of the day and is settled at T+1(Where T is expiry day). This means, the clearing house  takes the closing price of the underlying security while calculating the amount that needs to be credited/debited to its members. Source: - http://www.nseindia.com/products/content/derivatives/equities/settlement_mechanism.htm "I'm not an expert, but here is my best hypothesis. On Microsoft's (and most other company's) cash flow statements, they use the so-called ""indirect method"" of accounting for cash flow from operations. How that works, is they start with net income at the top, and then adjust it with line items for the various non-cash activities that contributed to net income. The key phrase is that these are accounting for the non-cash activities that contribute to net income. If the accounts receivable amount changes from something other than operating activity (e.g., if they have to write off some receivables because they won't be paid), the change didn't contribute to net income in the first place, so doesn't need to be reconciled on the cash flow statement." "Ugh... yes, you have to tell us what information you have available. It would be a completely different answer if, for example, you had a balance sheet for a prior period and an income statement for the current period and had to estimate the working capital accounts. If you can't be bothered to ""want to give the problem"" nobody is going to be bothered to help you with it.   Inventory days = days of COGS in inventory. (15 / 360 times cogs). AR is 35 days of sales in AR. 35/360* sales. Vendor credit is accounts payable -- 40 /360 * COGS.   If your sales and COGs are given by operating cycle rather than annually, use 50 instead of 360. (for whatever reason, convention says use 360 instead of 365)." I'm not asking if I should carry a balance to the end of the billing period and accrue interest Typically (I say typically because there may be some fringe outlier exception product that begins accruing interest immediately), if you're not carrying a balance already you will not be charged interest for carrying a balance during the billing period.   You accrue a balance, you're issued a statement, if you pay the statement before the due date indicated you don't pay interest; even if your statement balance is less than the current actual balance on the account.  If you carry a balance through that due date you begin to accrue interest.  Not only on the balance carried but on all new charges as well.  But as long as you consistently pay your statement balance before the statement due date you will not be charged any interest. As for a reason why you may want to take advantage of this, simply to ease the administration of your finances.  You just don't need to touch the accounts that frequently to avoid interest charges.  Sure you can let your money sit in an interest bearing account and earn a couple dollars a year but really, you just don't need to focus on your CC charges this frequently. "A.1 and B.1 are properly balanced, but ""Business Expense"" is an expense, not an asset. The T entries should be timestamped.  The time should be equal to the time on the credit card receipts.  This will make audit and balancing easier. A or B can be used, but if the the business is to be reimbursed for personal expenses, the accounts should be renamed to reflect that fact. More explicit account names could be ""Business expense - stationary"" and ""Personal expense - lunch"" or even better ""Personal expense - cammil - lunch"".  With a consistent format, the account names can be computer parsed for higher resolution and organization, but when tallying these high resolution accounts, debits & credits should always be used. When it comes time to collect from employees, only accounts with ""Personal expense"" need be referenced.  When it comes time to collect from ""cammil"", only net accounts of ""Personal expense - cammil"" need be referenced. An example of higher resolution, to determine what ""cammil"" owes, would be to copy the main books, reverse any account beginning with ""Personal expense - cammil"", and then take the balance.  Using the entries in the question as an example, here's the account to determine ""cammil""'s balance: Now, after all such balancing entries are performed, the net credit ""Personal expense - cammil"" is what ""cammil"" owes to the business. The scheme for account names should be from left to right, general to specific." That's pretty typical for introductory problems.  It's leading you into an NPV question.  They're keeping the cash flows the same to illustrate the time value of money to show you that even though the free cash flow is the same in year 1 and year 4 or whatever when you discount it to present value today's stream is worth more than tomorrow's Im creating a 5-year projection on Profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet and i\m suppose to use the LIBOR (5 year forward curve) as interest rate on debt.  This is the information i am given and it in USD.  Thanks for the link.  I guess its the USD LIBOR today, in one year, in two years, three years, four years and five years Thanks for this, great in depth answer. I had previously calculated a WACC and have used it for my discount rate.   As part of your last point on revenue vs. cash, I've set a accounts receivable period of 30 days, and then applied a factor of 30/365 * revenue to understand what portion of my revenue is not cash in hand. Does that make sense? Personally, I use the earlier date in Quicken so that it looks like I lose money earlier.   This isn't 100% accurate, but it keeps me from thinking my accounts have more money than they would otherwise have.