Okay, so in this lecture, we're going to be talking about the period concept. Time is actually very important in accounting terms. It's about dividing different chunks of time into periods of time in order to measure the transactions. So we can be looking typically at a period of time, between different points within a calendar month. So for example, the first of June could represent the beginning of a new period in June, and the 30th represents the end of the period of June. And then so on and so forth.

It's important to chunk these into blocks of time. And the reason why we do this, it will be clear when we start to learn about accrual accounting it's because what actual costs are incurred, they'll be recorded in the period in which they're actually incurred, as opposed to when the invoice actually has been transacted. And likewise, the revenues will be earned in the actual period when they actually earned as opposed to when the invoice was actually raised. periods are used for different purposes within accounting. They used to measure as at a point in time, they also used across a range of time. accountants use this range of time in order to compare periods against periods.

And so typically accountants could be looking at month to date for profit and loss statement, or they could be looking at a year to date, if it's a period of time threat that entire year, or they could be looking at a quarter or a half year or a full year. So period is actually something that we're going to be looking at time and time again throughout this course. I want you to really start to have a think about time and how it relates to accounting. Okay, so in the next lecture we're going to be talking about the reliability principle.