Bad debts mean the money owed by customers who have gone bankrupt or the likelihood of who's ever returning the money is significantly low. Bad debt is a nominal account. A nominal account is an account that records the business transactions belonging to a certain category of income, expense, profitRead more
Bad debts mean the money owed by customers who have gone bankrupt or the likelihood of who’s ever returning the money is significantly low. Bad debt is a nominal account.
A nominal account is an account that records the business transactions belonging to a certain category of income, expense, profit or loss. The balances on nominal accounts are normally written off at the end of each financial year. For example, sales A/c, purchases A/c, interest income, loss from the sale of assets etc.
Why are bad debts A/c classified as a nominal account?
First of all, let us understand the other two types of accounts – personal accounts and real accounts.
Personal accounts deal with the records of the business’ transactions with a particular person or entity. For example Mukesh A/c, Mahesh A/c, Reliance A/c, Suresh and Co. A/c etc.
Real accounts deal with transactions and records related to assets. The balance in these accounts is normally carried forward from one period to another. For example “Furniture A/c “, ” Building A/c ” etc.
Now that we have understood the basic definitions of all three types of accounts, we can discuss the reason behind the classification of bad debts as nominal accounts.
A bad debt is a loss that the company has incurred. It may be due to bankruptcy of customers, customer fraud etc. The company isn’t going to receive that money. The bad debts are written off at the end of the year by transferring them to profit and loss A/c.

Thus, bad debts relate to loss and are normally not carried forward from one period to another. Hence, they are classified as nominal accounts.
Treatment of Bad Debts
Bad debts are written off at the end of each year by debiting them to the profit and loss A/c. The amount of bad debts is reduced from the amount of debtors that the company has.
A company may also choose to create a provision for bad debts for the balance amount of debtors that the company has after adjusting for bad debts. This provision represents a rough estimate of the amount due to debtors that the business expects to not receive. In other words, it is an estimate of customer bankruptcy that the business expects.
Conclusion
We can conclude that
- There are primarily three types of accounts – real, personal and nominal.
- Bad debts are a nominal account.
- Bad debts is a loss that the business has incurred
- It may be due to bankruptcy of customers, fraud etc
- Bad debts are written off each year by transferring them to the income statement
















Interest on capital Interest on capital is interest payable to the owner/partners for providing a firm with the required capital to commence the business. It's a fixed return that a business owner is eligible to receive. When the business firm faces a loss, the interest on capital will not be providRead more
Interest on capital
Interest on capital is interest payable to the owner/partners for providing a firm with the required capital to commence the business. It’s a fixed return that a business owner is eligible to receive.
When the business firm faces a loss, the interest on capital will not be provided. It is permitted only when the business earns a profit. Such payment of interest is generally observed in partnership firms. It is provided before the division of profits among the partners in a partnership firm.
If an owner or partner introduces additional capital to the business, it is also taken into account for providing interest on capital.
Sample journal entry
Interest on capital is an expense for business, thus, debited as per the golden rules of accounting, debit the increase in expense, and the owner/partner’s capital a/c is credited as per the rule, credit all incomes and gain.
As per the modern rules of accounting, we debit the increase in expenditure and credit the increase in capital.
As we know, as per the business entity concept, business and owner are two different entities and a business is a separate living entity. Therefore, the capital introduced by the owner/partners is the amount on which they’re eligible to receive a return.
Example:
Tom is the business owner of the firm XYZ Ltd. He has contributed ₹ 10,00,000 to the business with 10% interest provided to Tom at the end of the year.
Solution:
Here interest on capital will be calculated as,
Interest on capital = Amount invested × Rate of interest × Number of Months/12
= 10,00,000 × 10% × 12/12
= ₹ 1,00,000

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