Hello, welcome first class of Financial Accounting class here at University of Illinois. Today we are going to talk about long-term assets. In particular, we are going to discuss accounting for long-term assets, accounting for depreciation, and accounting for asset disposals, as well as asset impairments. But before we start, let me briefly remind you of the asset recognition criteria, which is going to be quite important for this lesson. In accounting, not every expenditure is an asset. In other words, in accounting we do not capitalize every expenditure as an asset on the balance sheet. For an expenditure to be an asset, it has two satisfy two criteria. First, the benefit coming out of this asset needs to be quantifiable. And second, the rights to use this asset should be obtained because of some past transactions. Most of the time, in practice, the most important criterion is number one, whether the benefit coming out of this asset is quantifiable or not. Let me make a small note here. We have two groups of assets, tangible and intangible. Tangible assets are those where we can really touch them. Intangible assets are the ones that we cannot touch, but we can still see them on the balance sheet. I'm going to give you an example. Buildings, is buildings an asset? Yes. Why? First of all, is the benefit quantifiable? Yes. The money that you spend to build the buildings or to buy the buildings are quantity of or the value of that building. And the rights to use the buildings are coming out of some past transactions? Yes, I mean, in the past, we acquired those buildings through a contract, and therefore we have the right to use those buildings. And at the same time, by the way, buildings are some tangible assets. You can touch them. The same thing is also true for land. But how about R&D expenditures, research and development expenditures? Research and development expenditures in accounting are not an asset. Why? Because it doesn't satisfy the first asset recognition criterion, which is the benefit should be quantifiable. Research and development expenditures are certainly very important, but we cannot quantify the benefit coming out of research and development. Sometimes you spend lots of money on your R&D but you gain nothing out of this, and therefore R&D expenditures are not an asset. Instead, as soon as we spend the money on R&D, we immediately expense them. And the same thing is true, also, for advertising, as well as training. For example, advertising is very important, but the benefit coming out of advertising is not quantifiable. Therefore, advertising expenditures are not an asset. They're just normal expenditures. One very interesting asset here, which is patents acquired. Patents are, first of all, intangible assets. We cannot touch them. But when they are purchased from somebody else, we can create an asset for this patent. Why? Because the benefit is quantifiable. We have a value associated with this patent.