Picture this: you finish a big project for a client on December 31, but you won’t send the invoice until January. Your employees worked the last three days of the year, but payday isn’t until next week. Should your December reports show that revenue and those wages? Absolutely — and that’s where adjusting entries for accruals come in. Then think about the computer you bought for the office. It’ll be useful for years, so you can’t charge its whole cost to a single month. Instead, you spread it out with depreciation. This chapter shows you how to make these end‑of‑period adjustments so your numbers tell the real story.