Contributed capital
Financial Accounting glossary · Stockholders' Equity
Definition
Total amounts received from investors in exchange for stock; sum of common stock at par and APIC.
Contributed capital in plain English
Contributed capital is the total cash (or other value) that owners handed the company when they bought its stock — the money investors put in, not money the company earned. Picture a group of friends chipping in to start a lemonade stand: the pile of cash they contributed to own a piece of it is the contributed capital. It comes in two pieces added together: the small official "par" value stamped on each share, plus the extra amount investors paid above that par (called APIC, additional paid-in capital). Together they show how much of the company's funding came straight from its owners.
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