The Accruals to Assets Index is the ratio of total accruals to total assets, where total accruals are calculated as the change in working capital accounts other than cash less depreciation.
Excessive accruals may mean that managers are making discretionary accounting choices to alter earnings. Professor Messod Beneish counducted a study which found that the average Accruals to Assets Index for companies that were not manipulating earnings was 0.018, as compared with 0.031 for manipulators.