This item can include executive salaries, sales people salaries, office equipment purchases, office supplies, advertising, promotion, etc. Earnings is the total amount of profits after taxes are paid. This amount is owned by the shareholders. The balance sheet reports informationreports financial information at a specific point in time. Infomation is usually reported in the order of its liquidity.
Cash is the amount of cash actually in the companies bank accounts.
Some companies also include highly liquid marketable securities such as money market instruments as cash. Companies usually use a reserve for bad debt that assumes they will not collect the total amount of this figure. Company's generally want this figure as low as possible because its very expensive to carry large inventories which ties up capital that could be used for more promising projects. The historical value is the price the company paid to purchase the building or equipment even if it has a higher or lower current market value at today's prices. Payables are current liabilities that companies incur during the normal course of doing business .