Goodwill in accounting and investing is a term used to describe intangible assets that don't appear in hard numbers on a balance sheet. These can include a host of things that companies tend to value ...

Sometimes companies purchase businesses for more than what they are actually worth. The difference between a business' actual worth and what someone pays for that business is referred to as goodwill.

Charlene Rhinehart is a CPA , CFE, chair of an Illinois CPA Society committee, and has a degree in accounting and finance from DePaul University. During the infamous dotcom bubble in the late-1990s, ...