What Is a General Ledger? A general ledger represents the record-keeping system for a company’s financial data, with debit and credit account records validated by a trial balance. It provides a record of each financial transaction that takes place during the life of an operating company and holds account information that is needed to prepare
What Is a General Manager (GM)? A general manager (GM) is responsible for all or part of a department’s operations or the company’s operations, including generating revenue and controlling costs. In small companies, the general manager may be one of the top executives. In hierarchical organizations, GMs rank above most employees but below corporate-level executives.
What Is a General Obligation Bond? A general obligation bond (GO bond) is a municipal bond backed solely by the credit and taxing power of the issuing jurisdiction rather than the revenue from a given project. General obligation bonds are issued with the belief that a municipality will be able to repay its debt obligation
What Is a General Partnership? A general partnership is a business arrangement by which two or more individuals agree to share responsibilities, assets, profits, and financial and legal liabilities of a jointly-owned business. In a general partnership, partners agree to be personally responsible for potentially unlimited liability. Liabilities are not capped as they would be in
What Are General Provisions? General provisions are balance sheet items representing funds set aside by a company as assets to pay for anticipated future losses. For banks, a general provision is considered to be supplementary capital under the first Basel Accord. General provisions on the balance sheets of financial firms are considered to be a higher risk asset because
What Is a General Public Distribution? In finance, the term general public distribution refers to the process by which a private company becomes a publicly traded company by selling its shares to the public at large. This is in contrast to a conventional public distribution, in which the shares are sold largely to institutional investors.
What Is a Generation Gap? A generation gap refers to the chasm that separates the beliefs and behaviors belonging to members of two different generations. More specifically, a generation gap can be used to describe the differences in thoughts, actions, and tastes exhibited by members of younger generations versus older ones. The differences may be
What Is the Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax (GSTT)? The generation-skipping transfer tax is a federal tax on a gift or inheritance that prevents the donor from avoiding estate taxes by skipping children in favor of grandchildren. With the generation-skipping transfer tax, grandchildren receive the same amount as if the inheritance were coming from their parents. Before
What Is a Generation-Skipping Trust (GST)? A generation-skipping trust (GST) is a type of legally binding trust agreement in which the contributed assets are passed down to the grantor’s grandchildren, thus “skipping” the next generation, the grantor’s children. By passing over the grantor’s children, the assets avoid the estate taxes—taxes on an individual’s property upon
What Is Generation X (Gen X)? Generation X, which is sometimes shortened to Gen X, is the name given to the generation of Americans born between the mid-1960s and the early-1980s. The exact years that comprise Gen X vary. Some researchers—demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe, for example—place the exact birth years from 1961 to 1981, whereas Gallup
