also prepaid item

Just translated that into French. See below.

D. Accruals and deferred income
(unless national law provides for such items to be shown under C (9) under "Liabilities").
E. Profit for the financial year
(unless national law provides for it to be shown under A (VI) under "Liabilities").


D. Rechnungsabgrenzungsposten
(sofern nicht die einzelstaatlichen Rechtsvorschriften den Ausweis der Rechnungsabgrenzungsposten unter dem Posten C. 9 auf der Passivseite vorsehen).
E. Gewinn des Geschäftsjahres
(sofern nicht die einzelstaatlichen Rechtsvorschriften den Ausweis unter dem Posten A. VI auf der Passivseite vorsehen).



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Note added at 2002-03-16 19:49:09 (GMT)
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Source: Eur-lex

on the asset side, accruals and deferred income on the liabilities side.

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Note added at 2002-03-16 20:06:47 (GMT)
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Aktive Rechnungsabgrenzungsposten: costs and expenses paid goods and services not sold yet + the unrealised sales revenues (delivered, but not paid yet)
Passive -: future sales already paid for, costs and expenses charged to the Profit and Loss Statement, but not paid yet.

The terminology comes from the British Companies Act 1985 (mandatory balance sheet format)

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Note added at 2002-03-17 19:15:53 (GMT)
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Watch out: Rechnungsabgrenzung is a \"neutral\" term: it shall include both deferred/pre-paid costs/expenses and accrued income. As to the latter, please note that reasonable certain contingent gains are also included in this item on the asset side (so it would be a mistake to declare that only pre-paid expenses are here.

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Note added at 2002-03-17 19:20:14 (GMT)
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sorry: reasonably certain...

here is what Dietl Lorenz has to offer:
Rechnungsabgrenzungsposten:
accrued and deferred items.

auf der Aktivseite: deferred expenses and acrrues income

auf der Passivseite:
deferred income and accrued expenses


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Note added at 2002-03-17 00:05:57 (GMT)
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sorry for the typo: accrued income, of course(wish I had some)

In the context of your sentence a more general term is likely more appropriate. The sentence appears to be answering the question: "What is included in accounts receivable?"

For your further reference "accounts receivable" are called "accounts payable" on the debit side.

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Note added at 2002-03-17 06:03:35 (GMT)
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In my comment to Mag. RaWa I wrote \"die man sogar verkaufen koennen\". It should have read \"die man sogar verkaufen kann\". I apologize for my bad use of grammar.

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Note added at 2002-03-17 06:12:11 (GMT)
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I offer still further clarification in defense of my suggestion. Abgrenzungskonten include an extremely large and diverse number of items including \"accounts receivable\" and \"accounts payable\". The emphasis in the above text is on short-term items. Thus my answer appears particularly appropriate.

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Note added at 2002-03-18 00:24:19 (GMT)
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The author is speaking of a single \"Rechnungsabgrenzung\" item included among a class of items to which he refers as short-term assets. He is not addressing the entire class of items contained in the category \"Rechnungsabgrenzungskonten\", which is indeed very large. In fact the only thing we know about this particular \"Rechnungsabgrenzung\" item is that advanced payment is made. In this sense you are probably correct that it is not an accounts receivable item, but then what is it? It is not a deferred payment, because it is already payed. Neither is it the entire class of items commonly referred to as \"Rechnungabgrenzungskonten\". Are there a sub-class of items contained in the class Rechnungsabgrenzungskonten that are called \"advanced payments\"?

See explanation under "Accounts receivable" for explanation. Hamo was clearly wrong.

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Note added at 2002-03-18 00:53:22 (GMT)
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See \"Prepaid expenses\" below for correct answer. This was merely a good guess.

It appears that Mag. RaWa was correct about the name, simply he added a hyphen which is not necessary.

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Note added at 2002-03-18 00:51:44 (GMT)
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Source: _Principles of Accounting_ by Walgenbach, Dittrich, and Hanson.