With the rise of online platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and Remote.co, more and more people are working remotely to offer their services to businesses worldwide. This means that nowadays, freelancers have greater opportunities to find work and grow their businesses faster. Millions of jobs are posted on the site annually, and there are over 5,000 skills on offer, including financial services.

This software makes your accounting easier, more accurate, and less time-consuming. If you have many clients, you need to have software that’ll act as a bridge between platforms, payment processors, software your client uses, and the program you use. Integration of this multichannel data is where many errors can occur and trying to tease out those issues is tedious and nearly impossible to do quickly. First things first, whether it’s an accounting or any other freelance job, there are elements of the freelancer’s job that are common to all. You have to be prepared for the risks that come along with being self-employed.

How Much You Will Earn as a Freelance Accountant

Accountants use a variety of digital tools, including Quickbooks, Xero, and Sage. Whether you’re still a student or already working in the field of accounting, you might decide that freelancing is right for you. This guide is for anyone who’s interested in knowing how to become a freelance accountant, so read on for some helpful information and tips. I am looking to open a personal bank account in Argentina and require assistance with the online setup and overseas transactions. I need help setting up my account online and any other requirements that come with international banking. I need to be able to make international transfers into and out of my account, as well as be able to view in-depth information about my financial activities.

Scott had a lot of finance experience which he used to ask the right questions and help us do things more quickly than we would have done without him. The commission model is crucial to us being able to scale, he integrated seamlessly with our finance team and efficiently got us the outputs we needed. John is a highly commercial, entrepreneurial, culturally intelligent leader who speaks six languages.

Need to hire a freelancer for a job?

Accountants are responsible for maintaining and preparing financial statements for a company. The records are used in a variety of ways and clearly present important financial information to the stakeholders of a business. They help the senior managers of a company keep track of the current financial status of the business and to make better-informed decisions. You can hire certified public accountants, a small business accountant, or a personal financial specialist for your business.

The average annual earnings of freelance accountants is $64,990 per year, based on ZipRecruiter’s findings. The lowest earning freelance accountants make $18,000, while the highest earners make as much as $128,000. In comparison, salaried accountants earn a median wage of $71,550. In the freelancing world, you’re more likely to get jobs if you have a positive online presence.

Adapting for Success – A Guide to Change Management

Start by building your LinkedIn profile and making sure your other social media accounts are professional. Online accounting degrees are designed to develop the necessary skills, expertise, and experience to prepare for the field’s present and future. Online degrees are also 100% coursework and can be done without the need to visit a campus.

Toptal is a marketplace for top management accountants, specialists, and talent. Each Toptal Management Accountant is thoroughly vetted and trusted by top companies for their most critical accounting-related projects. I need someone who can oversee commission reports, identify overages or inaccuracies, reconcile accounts payables and accountant for freelancers receivables for an energy brokerage company. This has the opportunity to be a long term, full time opportunity with upside growth potential. To become a freelance accountant, you will need some specific skills and experience. It’s so easy to devote time to your client’s businesses while you keep putting off your own finance books.

In addition to advancing business plans, Blessing meticulously gathers and analyzes complex data to identify and address discrepancies and opportunities. Terry is the founder of Fulton Advisory, an outsourced CFO & Accounting Services provider for small businesses and growth-stage startups. Terry leads a team of five at Fulton Advisory, where they act as a complete outsourced function for all finance and accounting responsibilities for their clients. They take an operational approach while keeping each founder’s specific exit goals in mind in crafting the appropriate financing and reporting strategy. She worked as a controlling manager in an international company and as a manager in the Big Four. She has a keen interest in getting to know the core business and processes, including overall business acumen.

Finance and work stability are other elements that need to be spoken about. During the busy tax season every accountant has their hands full, so that shouldn’t be discounted. But all in all, you won’t get a neat monthly salary – and your finances will mostly depend on how well your business is doing and how much work you’re willing to take on.

Even if online accounting is something you’ve done for years, becoming a freelancer may seem tricky to begin with. We hope that by offering some tips and advice, succeeding as a freelance accountant or bookkeeper will be much easier. At Freelancer.com, people needing expert help with account management can find qualified professionals who can provide tailored support.

• Account management professionals help organizations to ensure that their financial transactions and accounts are operating in an efficient manner, according to the businesses’ requirements.
• A hedge fund analyst and a former CFO of a startup, Evgeny performed deep-dive research on 15+ public equities and evaluated 30+ private equity and mezzanine debt transactions.
• Her strength is her curiosity for small things and business and finance strategy.
• I am planning to launch an online health goods store in Europe and then aim to transition it into an online pharmacy.
• With the rise of online platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and Remote.co, more and more people are working remotely to offer their services to businesses worldwide.
• The average annual earnings of freelance accountants is $64,990 per year, based on ZipRecruiter’s findings.

On the flip side, personalize the elements that matter to you, whether it’s your working space or your work routine. Be gentle with yourself, and remember that you’re learning and making the first steps into the freelance world. You’ll make mistakes, and things won’t go as planned but that’s how we learn.

It includes relevant and significant costs that exert a material impact on production cost and product pricing in the long run. They can include the price of crude oil, electricity, any essential raw material, etc. A fixed building lease, for example, does not alter in price as output increases. The fixed cost will be reduced in comparison to the cost of each unit made, enhancing your profit margin for that product. A variable cost is a specific material utilized in production because the price increases as you order more.

Understanding the additional costs of increasing a product’s manufacturing is beneficial when deciding the retail price of the product. Companies seek to maximize production levels and profitability by analyzing the incremental costs of manufacturing. When evaluating a business segment’s profitability, only relevant incremental costs that can be directly linked to the business segment are examined. Incremental revenue is compared to baseline revenue to determine a company’s return on investment.

Jobs with an Incremental Cost

The two calculations for incremental revenue and incremental cost are thus essential to determine the company’s profitability when production output is expanded. Costs are determined differently by each organization according to its overhead cost structure. The separation of fixed costs and variable costs and determination of raw material and labor costs also differs from organization to organization.

When making short-term decisions or selecting between two possibilities, such as whether to accept a special order, incremental costs are important. If a lower price is set for special order, it is vital that the income generated by the special order at least covers the incremental costs. That is why it is critical to understand the incremental cost of any more units. You can then compare these to the price you earn for selling the units to see whether your business is profitable enough.

Uses of Incremental Cost Computations

As a result, while both ideas are related to a cost shift, marginal cost relates to both a rise and a decrease in production. Understanding incremental expenses can assist a business in improving its efficiency and saving money. Incremental costs can also help you decide whether to make a product or buy it elsewhere.

As a result, incremental cost affects the company’s decision to expand or increase output. In this post, we define incremental cost, learn how to calculate it with a formula and see an example of how it might assist a business make profitable decisions. Long-run incremental cost (LRIC) is a forward-looking cost concept that predicts likely changes in relevant costs in the long run.

Benefits of Incremental Cost Analysis

Certain costs will be incurred whether there is an increase in production or not, which are not computed when determining incremental cost, and they include fixed costs. However, care must be exercised as allocation of fixed costs to total cost decreases as additional units are produced. The incremental cost is an important calculation for firms to determine the change in expenses they will incur if they grow their production. These additional charges are reported on the company’s balance sheet and income statement.

• Incremental cost is important because it affects product pricing decisions.
• These additional charges are reported on the company’s balance sheet and income statement.
• As a result, while both ideas are related to a cost shift, marginal cost relates to both a rise and a decrease in production.
• A variable cost is a specific material utilized in production because the price increases as you order more.
• If the LRIC rises, it is likely that a corporation will boost product pricing to meet the costs; the inverse is also true.

There is a need to prepare a spreadsheet that tracks costs and production output. The company management can consider the cost of producing one additional unit to make their pricing decisions to make a profit. The long-run incremental cost for lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite as critical raw materials for making electric vehicles are a good example. If the long-run predicted cost of the raw materials is expected to rise, then electric vehicle prices will likely be higher in the future. The attempt to calculate and accurately predict such costs assist a company in making future investment decisions that can increase revenue and reduce costs. The incremental cost is the cost involved to make an additional unit of product.

INCREMENTAL COST: Definition, Formula, Examples & Calculations

That also means the additional cost incurred by a company if it produces one extra unit of output. To improve decision-making efficiency, incremental cost calculation should be automated at all levels of production. There is a requirement to create a spreadsheet that tracks costs and output. A notable example is the long-run incremental cost of lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite as important raw materials for creating electric vehicles. If the long-run estimated cost of raw materials rises, electric car prices will most likely rise in the future. The endeavour to calculate and precisely estimate such expenses aids a corporation in making future investment decisions that can boost revenue while decreasing costs.

The overall cost incurred as a result of producing an additional unit of product is referred to as incremental cost. The incremental cost is computed by examining the additional expenses incurred during the manufacturing process, such as raw materials, what is an incremental cost for each additional unit of output. Understanding incremental costs can assist businesses in increasing production efficiency and profitability. Marginal cost is the change in total cost as a result of producing one additional unit of output.

The Advantages of Incremental Cost Analysis

Each smartphone costs you $100 to produce, and your selling price each smartphone is $300. Companies utilize incremental revenue as a comparative measure with their baseline revenue level to calculate their return on investment. They may then determine how much money they can afford to spend on marketing efforts and how much sales volume is required to generate a profit for the company. Incremental cost is the cost incurred due to an additional unit of a product being produced.

• Certain costs will be incurred whether there is an increase in production or not, which are not computed when determining incremental cost, and they include fixed costs.
• The separation of fixed costs and variable costs and determination of raw material and labor costs also differs from organization to organization.
• You calculate your incremental revenue by multiplying the number of smartphone units by the selling price per smartphone unit.
• Incremental cost is choice-based; hence, it only includes forward-looking costs.
• The calculation of incremental cost needs to be automated at every level of production to make decision-making more efficient.

It is usually made up of variable costs, which change in line with the volume of production. Incremental cost includes raw material inputs, direct labor cost for factory https://www.bookstime.com/ workers, and other variable overheads, such as power/energy and water usage cost. Each organization determines costs differently based on its overhead cost structure.

Incremental Cost

The cost of building a factory and set-up costs for the plant are regarded as sunk costs and are not included in the incremental cost calculation. When the two are compared, it is evident that the incremental revenue exceeds the incremental cost. So, you get a profit of $4,000,000 by deducting the incremental cost from the incremental revenue.

Enter the total of other assets such as accounts receivable, inventories, prepaid expenses, and the organization’s share of assets in any joint ventures, LLCs, and other entities treated as a partnership for federal tax purposes. Check this box if the organization has terminated its existence or ceased to be a section 501(a) or section 527 organization and is filing its final return as an exempt organization or section 4947(a)(1) trust. See the instructions for line 36 that discuss liquidations, dissolutions, terminations, or significant disposition of net https://personal-accounting.org/accounting-for-tech-startups-what-you-need-to-know/ assets. An organization that checks this box because it has liquidated, terminated, ceased operations, dissolved, merged into another organization, or has had its exemption revoked during the tax year must also attach Schedule N (Form 990). All organizations filing Form 990-EZ must complete Parts I through V of Form 990-EZ, and any required schedules and attachments. If an organization isn’t required to file Form 990-EZ but chooses to do so, it must file a complete return and provide all of the information requested, including the required schedules.

• In such case, the state may ask the organization to provide the missing information or to submit an amended return.
• Many require charities to register with a state

  agency before asking for contributions from state residents.

• If a state requires the organization to file an amended Form 990 or 990-EZ to correct conflicts with the Instruction for Form 990 or 990-EZ, the organization must also file an amended return with the IRS.
• If you’re unsure of what this document requires, it’s best to seek professional tax advice.
• Report on line 14 or 16 rental expenses for rental income reported on lines 2 and 4.
• However, you’ll find the process is much smoother when you are completely aware of what is required from your organization and also understand why you are filing the form.

Form 1099-NEC and/or Form 1099-MISC may be required to be issued for payments to an independent contractor, with compensation reported in box 1 of Form 1099-NEC and/or box 6 of Form 1099-MISC. Enter the amount the organization paid, whether reported in box 1 of Form 1099-NEC, in box 6 of Form 1099-MISC, or paid under the parties’ agreement or applicable state law, for the calendar year ending with or within the organization’s tax year. Report the subtotals of compensation from duplicate Section A tables for filers that report more than 25 persons in the Section A, line 1a, table in line 1c, columns (D), (E), and (F). For a short year return in which there is no calendar year that ends with or within the short year, leave column (F) blank, unless the return is a final return. If the return is a final return, report the other compensation for the short year from both the filing organization and related organizations. For each person required to be listed, enter the name on the top of each row and the person’s title or position with the organization on the bottom of the row.

Instructions for Form 990-EZ – Introductory Material

Report on this line predetermined quota support and dues (excluding membership dues of the type described below) by local agencies to their state or national organizations for unspecified purposes, that is, general use of funds for the national organization’s own program and support services. Also include Internet site link costs, signage costs, and advertising costs for the organization’s in-house fundraising campaigns. Include fees paid to independent contractors for advertising, except for fees paid to independent contractors for conducting professional fundraising services or campaigns, which are reported on line 11e. Enter amounts paid for professional fundraising services, including solicitation campaigns and advice or other consulting services supporting in-house fundraising campaigns. If the organization is unable to distinguish between these amounts, it should report all such fees and amounts on line 11e. For an employee who works on fundraising 40% of the time and program management 60% of the time, an organization must allocate that employee’s salary 40% to fundraising and 60% to program service expenses.

• For a bingo game to meet the legal definition of bingo, wagers must be placed, winners must be determined, and prizes or other property must be distributed in the presence of all persons placing wagers in that game.
• This

  acknowledgement must be carefully written so that the value of the items donated

  are accurately described.

• The Appendix C tests are limited to determining the tax-exempt status of section 501(c)(7) and 501(c)(15) organizations.
• The annual accounting period for which the Form 990 is being filed, whether the calendar year ending December 31 or a fiscal year ending on the last day of any other month.
• Section B doesn’t require reporting of compensation from related organizations.

See section 170(f)(17) and Regulations section 1.170A-15 for more information. In the case of a text message contribution, the donor’s phone bill meets the section 170(f)(17) recordkeeping requirement of a reliable written record if it shows the name of the donee organization and the date and amount of contribution. Each jurisdiction can require the additional material to be presented on forms they provide. The additional information shouldn’t be submitted with the Form 990 or 990-EZ filed with the IRS, unless included on Schedule O (Form 990). 15 (Circular E) for more details, including the definition of responsible persons. Used to report cash amounts in excess of $10,000 that were received in a single transaction (or in two or more related transactions) in the course of a trade or business (as defined in section 162).

Accommodation and Food Services

Organizations described in section 501(c)(5), (6), or (7) generally provide benefits with a reasonable relationship to dues, although benefits to members can be indirect. Dues and assessments received that compare reasonably with the benefits of membership. Contributions can arise from fundraising events when items of only nominal or insubstantial value are given or offered. Report assets contributed to the organization by another entity in the course of the entity’s liquidation, dissolution, or termination. If the organization receives its mail in care of a third party (such as an accountant or an attorney), enter “C/O” on the street address line, followed by the third party’s name and street address or P.O.

Because of the sheer amount of information the form requires, it will likely necessitate the assistance of a tax professional well-versed in tax law. Form 990 is intended to provide the government and interested members of the public with a snapshot of the organization’s activities Startup Bookkeeping Services Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and CFO Services for that year. It’s possible that some donors may base their gifting decisions on what they can discern from Form 990. The IRS requires an extensive amount of information from the organization; the instructions for how to complete the 12-page form are 100 pages in length.

Educational Services

If a member pays dues primarily to support the organization’s activities, and not to obtain benefits of more than nominal or insubstantial monetary value, those dues are a contribution to the organization includible on line 1. The following examples illustrate the distinction between government payments reportable on lines 1 and 2. Contributions can arise from fundraising events when an excess payment is received for items offered. Enter the organization’s current address for its primary website, as of the date of filing this return. If the organization doesn’t maintain a website, enter “N/A” (not applicable).

If the combined amount of an organization’s gross investment income, and other gross income from unrelated trades or businesses, is $1,000 or more for the tax year, the organization must report the investment income, and other unrelated business income, on Form 990-T. If the organization is required to file Form 8282, Donee Information Return, to report information to the IRS and to donors about dispositions of certain donated property made within 3 years after the donor contributed the property, it must answer “Yes” and indicate the number of Forms 8282 filed. Because the donor’s payment exceeds $75, the organization must furnish a disclosure statement even though the taxpayer’s deductible amount doesn’t exceed $75.

Form 990 contains changes affecting public support calculation, black lung trusts

Treat as paid, accrued, or held directly by the organization any amounts paid or accrued under a deferred compensation plan, or held by a deferred compensation trust, that is established, sponsored, or maintained by the organization. A program service is a major (usually ongoing) objective of an organization, such as adoptions, recreation for the elderly, rehabilitation, or publication of journals or newsletters. Do not report the cost of goods or services purchased from affiliates on line 10. Include on this line the amount of payments to, or for the benefit of, particular clients or patients, including assistance by others at the organization’s expense. Do not deduct investment management fees from the amount of investment income reported on this line, but report these fees on line 13.

• Answer “Yes” only if a complete copy of the organization’s final Form 990 (including all required schedules), as ultimately filed with the IRS, was provided to each person who was a voting member of the governing body at the time the Form 990 was provided, whether in paper or electronic form, before its filing with the IRS.
• Rather, a grant or other payment from a governmental unit is reported here if its primary purpose is to enable the organization to provide a service to, or maintain a facility for, the direct benefit of the public rather than to serve the direct and immediate needs of the governmental unit.
• Answer “Yes” if the organization was a party to a prohibited tax shelter transaction as described in section 4965(e) at any time during the organization’s tax year.
• If the organization has more than one pension plan, complete a Form 5500 for each plan.
• However, if the group return includes separate schedules for each local or subordinate organization included in the group return, the local or subordinate organization receiving the request can omit any schedules relating only to other organizations included in the group return.

Statology Study is the ultimate online statistics study guide that helps you study and practice all of the core concepts taught in any elementary statistics course and makes your life so much easier as a student. Statology is a site that makes learning statistics easy by explaining topics in simple and straightforward ways. We can say that 68% of the variation in the skin cancer mortality rate is reduced by taking into account latitude. Or, we can say — with knowledge of what it really means — that 68% of the variation in skin cancer mortality is « explained by » latitude. We can say that 68% (shaded area above) of the variation in the skin cancer mortality rate is reduced by taking into account latitude.

• We complete that section with a discussion of the implication of all the obtained outcomes.
• Some variability is explained by the model and some variability is not explained.
• Eliminate grammar errors and improve your writing with our free AI-powered grammar checker.
• We will also study some variants of the coefficient of determination, such as the adjusted R-squared (Miles, 2014) and the coefficient of partial determination (Zhang, 2017).

When R-squared has negative values, it indicates that the model performed poorly but it is impossible to know how bad a model performed. For example, an R-squared equal to −0.5 alone does not say much about the quality of the model, because the lower bound is −∞. Differently from SMAPE that has values between 0 and 2, the minus sign of the coefficient of determination would however clearly inform the practitioner about the poor performance of the regression. Despite the fact that MAPE, MAE, MSE and RMSE are commonly used in machine learning studies , we showed that it is impossible to detect the quality of the performance of a regression method by just looking at their singular values. An MAPE of 0.7 alone, for example, fails to communicate if the regression algorithm performed mainly correctly or poorly.

Book traversal links for 9.3 – Coefficient of Determination

The formula calculates the Pearson’s r correlation coefficient between the rankings of the variable data. The formula for the Pearson’s r is complicated, but most computer programs can quickly churn out the correlation coefficient from your data. In a simpler bom definition & meaning form, the formula divides the covariance between the variables by the product of their standard deviations. After removing any outliers, select a correlation coefficient that’s appropriate based on the general shape of the scatter plot pattern.

• In general, a high R2 value indicates that the model is a good fit for the data, although interpretations of fit depend on the context of analysis.
• There are many different guidelines for interpreting the correlation coefficient because findings can vary a lot between study fields.
• This is the proportion of common variance not shared between the variables, the unexplained variance between the variables.

Or, we can say — with knowledge of what it really means — that 68% of the variation in skin cancer mortality is due to or explained by latitude. About \(67\%\) of the variability in the value of this vehicle can be explained by its age. If you want to know more about statistics, methodology, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Let us consider now a vector of 5 integer elements having values (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) , and a regression prediction made by the variables (a, b, c, d, e) . Each of these variables can assume all the integer values between 1 and 5, included. We compute the coefficient of determination and cnSMAPE for each of the predictions with respect to the actual values. To compare the values of the coefficient of determination and cnSMAPE in the same range, we consider only the cases when R-squared is greater or equal to zero, and we call it non-negative R-squared. After this Introduction, in the Methods section we introduce the cited metrics, with their mathematical definition and their main properties, and we provide a more detailed description of R2 and SMAPE and their extreme values (“Methods”). In the following section Results and Discussion, we present the experimental part (“Results and Discussion”).

The selection of use cases presented here are to some extent limited, since one could consider infinite many other use cases that we could not analyze here. Nevertheless, we did not find any use cases in which SMAPE turned out to be more informative than R-squared. Based on the results of this study and our own experience, R-squared seems to be the most informative rate in many cases, if compared to SMAPE, MAPE, MAE, MSE and RMSE. We therefore suggest the employment of R-squared as the standard statistical measure to evaluate regression analyses, in any scientific area. Another interesting aspect of these results on the hepatitis dataset regards the comparison between coefficient of determination and SMAPE (Table 3).

Using a correlation coefficient

The coefficient of determination can take values in the range (−∞, 1] according to the mutual relation between the ground truth and the prediction model. Hereafter we report a brief overview of the principal cases. Indeed, despite the lack of a concerted standard, a set of well established and preferred metrics does exist and we believe that, as primus inter pares, the coefficient of determination R-squared deserves a major role. The coefficient of determination is also known as R-squared or R2 in the scientific literature. For consistency, we will use all these three names interchangeably in this study. While the Pearson correlation coefficient measures the linearity of relationships, the Spearman correlation coefficient measures the monotonicity of relationships. Note that the steepness or slope of the line isn’t related to the correlation coefficient value.

Is the coefficient of determination the same as R^2?

The first formula is specific to simple linear regressions, and the second formula can be used to calculate the R² of many types of statistical models. In least squares regression using typical data, R2 is at least weakly increasing with increases in the number of regressors in the model. Because increases in the number of regressors increase the value of R2, R2 alone cannot be used as a meaningful comparison of models with very different numbers of independent variables.

What is the coefficient of determination?

Flag indicating if NaN and -Inf scores resulting from constant
data should be replaced with real numbers (1.0 if prediction is
perfect, 0.0 otherwise). Default is True, a convenient setting
for hyperparameters’ search procedures (e.g. grid search
cross-validation). Explained the extreme cases of R-squared and SMAPE, in the next section we illustrate some significant, informative use cases where these two rates generate discordant outcomes. Given the better robustness of R-squared and SMAPE over the other four rates, we focus the rest of this article on the comparison between these two statistics.

Calculating the coefficient of determination

On a graph, how well the data fits the regression model is called the goodness of fit, which measures the distance between a trend line and all of the data points that are scattered throughout the diagram. The explanation of this statistic is almost the same as R2 but it penalizes the statistic as extra variables are included in the model. For cases other than fitting by ordinary least squares, the R2 statistic can be calculated as above and may still be a useful measure. If fitting is by weighted least squares or generalized least squares, alternative versions of R2 can be calculated appropriate to those statistical frameworks, while the « raw » R2 may still be useful if it is more easily interpreted. Values for R2 can be calculated for any type of predictive model, which need not have a statistical basis. In Statistical Analysis, the coefficient of determination method is used to predict and explain the future outcomes of a model.

Use each of the three formulas for the coefficient of determination to compute its value for the example of ages and values of vehicles. You can also say that the R² is the proportion of variance “explained” or “accounted for” by the model. The proportion that remains (1 − R²) is the variance that is not predicted by the model. This tutorial provides an example of how to find and interpret R2 in a regression model in R.

Adjusted R2

This method also acts like a guideline which helps in measuring the model’s accuracy. In this article, let us discuss the definition, formula, and properties of the coefficient of determination in detail. This property of R-squared and SMAPE can be useful in particular when one needs to compare the predictive performance of a regression on two different datasets having different value scales. For example, suppose we have a mental health study describing a predictive model where the outcome is a depression scale ranging from 0 to 100, and another study using a different depression scale, ranging from 0 to 10 (Reeves, 2021). Using R-squared or SMAPE we could compare the predictive performance of the two studies without making additional transformations. Introduced by Wright (1921) and generally indicated by R2, its original formulation quantifies how much the dependent variable is determined by the independent variables, in terms of proportion of variance.

But it’s not a good measure of correlation if your variables have a nonlinear relationship, or if your data have outliers, skewed distributions, or come from categorical variables. If any of these assumptions are violated, you should consider a rank correlation measure. Because r is quite close to 0, it suggests — not surprisingly, I hope — that there is next to no linear relationship between height and grade point average.