Answering Advertisements on Craigslist

Craigslist is an online community which has a great deal to offer to both individuals and business owners. Some of the features on Craigslist include sections for community events, activities and news, personals advertisements, discussion forums, housing opportunities, for sale items, services offered, small business advertisements, jobs and resumes. While some of these sections such as the discussion forum and parts of the community section exist exclusively for the purpose of exchanging information or ideas, other sections such as the personals, housing, sale, services, job and resume sections provide the opportunity for users to respond to advertisements for more information or to make a purchase. In these cases uses should exercise caution. This article will focus on specific precautions which should be taken when answering advertisements in the personals, housing and jobs sections of Craigslist.

Answering Personals Advertisements

The personals section of Craigslist can be a great place for individuals to meet platonic friends or potential romantic partners. However, it can also be a location for predators to prey on unsuspecting victims who do not realize the threat of danger which may exist with meeting online partners in person.

One of the simplest ways to avoid potentially harmful situations is to never agreeing to meet someone in a desolate location. Initial meetings should take place in busy, public locations to minimize the potential for danger. Predators are much less likely to attempt to harm you in a public location. Additionally, it is wise to not travel to a secluded location with someone you don’t know until you are positive they do not intend to do you any harm.

Precautions should also be taken to avoid giving out personal information such as your address to those you meet online. The Internet affords a certain degree of anonymousness and some unscrupulous individuals can take advantage of this to mask their true identity.

Answering Housing Advertisements

The housing advertisements on Craigslist offer opportunities for those who are seeking housing situations such as rental of a housing location, roommate opportunities, sublets or house swaps. Care should be taken in all of these opportunities to ensure the person you are working with does not have any ill intentions towards you. This can be done by carefully screening all potential roommates or others who might be using your house or apartment.

When selecting a potential roommate it is important to verify the individual is trustworthy and able to pay the rent. It is also important to seek out an individual with living habits similar to your own to avoid the potential for conflict.

Answering Job Advertisements

Craigslist is an excellent location for finding exciting new career opportunities. There are many different job advertisements in a variety of different categories. These job opportunities include full time, part time, telecommute and contract positions. The downside to answering job advertisements on Craigslist is the advertisements are often placed anonymously. Those who place the advertisements are given the opportunity to either use their own email address for candidates to respond or to have candidates respond through an email address generated by Craigslist. Therefore, candidates do not always know who has placed the advertisements. For this reason care should be taken when responding to these advertisements to avoid supplying specific contact information. Candidates are instead urged to supply only an email address when responding to advertisements.

Depreciation reporting

In an accountant's reporting systems, depreciation of a business's fixed assets such as its buildings, equipment, computers, etc. is not recorded as a cash outlay. When an accountant measures profit on the accrual basis of accounting, he or she counts depreciation as an expense. Buildings, machinery, tools, vehicles and furniture all have a limited useful life. All fixed assets, except for actual land, have a limited lifetime of usefulness to a business. Depreciation is the method of accounting that allocates the total cost of fixed assets to each year of their use in helping the business generate revenue.

Part of the total sales revenue of a business includes recover of cost invested in its fixed assets. In a real sense a business sells some of its fixed assets in the sales prices that it charges it customers. For example, when you go to a grocery store, a small portion of the price you pay for eggs or bread goes toward the cost of the buildings, the machinery, bread ovens, etc. Each reporting period, a business recoups part of the cost invested in its fixed assets.

It's not enough for the accountant to add back depreciation for the year to bottom-line profit. The changes in other assets, as well as the changes in liabilities, also affect cash flow from profit. The competent accountant will factor in all the changes that determine cash flow from profit. Depreciation is only one of many adjustments to the net income of a business to determine cash flow from operating activities. Amortization of intangible assets is another expense that is recorded against a business's assets for year. It's different in that it doesn't require cash outlay in the year being charged with the expense. That occurred when the business invested in those tangible assets.

Balance sheet

A balance sheet is a quick picture of the financial condition of a business at a specific period in time. The activities of a business fall into two separate groups that are reported by an accountant. They are profit-making activities, which includes sales and expenses. This can also be referred to as operating activities. There are also financing and investing activities that include securing money from debt and equity sources of capital, returning capital to these sources, making distributions from profit to the owners, making investments in assets and eventually disposing of the assets.

Profit making activities are reported in the income statement; financing and investing activities are found in the statement of cash flows. In other words, two different financial statements are prepared for the two different types of transactions. The statement of cash flows also reports the cash increase or decrease from profit during the year as opposed to the amount of profit that is reported in the income statement.

The balance sheet is different from the income and cash flow statements which report, as it says, income of cash and outgoing cash. The balance sheet represents the balances, or amounts, or a company's assets, liabilities and owners' equity at an instant in time. The word balance has different meanings at different times. As it's used in the term balance sheet, it refers to the balance of the two opposite sides of a business, total assets on one side and total liabilities on the other. However, the balance of an account, such as the asset, liability, revenue and expense accounts, refers to the amount in the account after recording increases and decreases in the account, just like the balance in your checking account. Accountants can prepare a balance sheet any time that a manager requests it. But they're generally prepared at the end of each month, quarter and year. It's always prepared at the close of business on the last day of the profit period.