The Foreign General Ledgers contain details of credits and debits to accounts at United Artists' foreign offices. These offices, modeled on the corporation's system of domestic exchanges, did business within a designated geographical area. Thus, the Argentina office conducted business in Uruguay and Paraguay as well as in Argentina; the Puerto Rico office also did business in Aruba and Curacao, and so forth. Detailed information as to the geographical scope of each office may be found in the description for the Foreign Accounts Section. The individual accounts encompass the entire range of activities of UA's foreign business, from capital stock to petty cash and from profit on currency exchange to producers' shares of played-and-earned income. Whenever funds were transferred from one account to another, an entry appeared in the ledgers. (Corresponding entries were made on a daily basis in foreign journals; unfortunately, these have not survived.) A list of the accounts recorded in a typical volume follows. Note that in most cases figures in the foreign ledgers are in local currencies, not U.S. dollars. Also included at the end of the series are a Foreign Journal, March 1934-December 1935, and a Foreign Home Office Ledger, 1933-1948.
There follows a representative list of the kinds of accounts to be found in the Foreign General Ledgers. This list was extracted from the volume for Colombia, 1949, and includes both ledger and operating expense entries in their original order.
General Ledger
- Cash - Film Rental Account
- Reserve for Doubtful Accounts
- Cash - Sales Managers Account
- Reserve for Depreciation of Furniture
- Petty Cash
- U.A.C. Purchase Account
- Advances & Deposits
- Capital Stock
- Investments
- Surplus
- Accounts Receivable Agents - Bucaramanga
- Played & Earned
- Accounts Receivable - Exhibitors
- Producers Share of Played & Earned
- Furniture & Fixtures
- Accessory Sales
- Deferred Charges
- Cost of Accessories
- Accounts Payable - Producers
- Profit & Loss on Exchange
- Accounts Payable & Accrued Expenses
- Other Income
- Deferred Credits
- Prints, Duty, Censorship, etc.
- Reserve for Taxes on Future Re-mittances
- Operating Expenses
- Income Tax
- Reserve for Employees Dismissal Indemnities
- Other Taxes
- Depreciation of Furniture & Fixtures
- Reserve for Amortization Investments
- Other Expenses
- Profit & Loss
- Salaries
- Insurance
- Employees Dismissal
- Advertising & Publicity
- Agents Commission
- Auditing & Legal Fees
- Checking
- Film Maintenance
- Rent & House Service
- Association Dues
- Travel
- Newspapers, Magazines & Statistics
- Local Transportation
- Medical Attention & Medicine
- Stationery & Office Supplies
- Depreciation of Furniture & Fixtures
- Telephone & Telegraph
- Miscellaneous
- Postage
- Social Insurance
- Freight & Cartage
- Bank Charges
