Let us begin with a short explanation of what Calls-in-Advance is:

Whenever a company accepts money from its shareholders for calls not yet made, then we call it calls-in-advance. To put it in even simpler terms, it is the amount not yet called up by the company but paid by the shareholder. An important thing to note here is that a company can accept calls-in-advance from its shareholders only when authorized by its Articles of Association.

Calls-in-advance is treated as the company’s liability because it has received the money in advance, which has not yet become due. Till the amount becomes due, it will be treated as a current liability of the company.

The journal entry for recording calls-in-advance is as follows:

The money received from the shareholder is an asset for the company and therefore Bank A/c is debited with the amount received as calls-in-advance. The calls-in-advance A/c is credited because it is a liability for the company.

Since Calls-in-Advance is a liability, it is shown in the Equities and Liabilities part of the Balance Sheet under the head Current Liabilities and sub-head Other Current Liabilities.

For better understanding, we will take an example,

ABC Ltd. made the first call of 3 per share on its 10,00,000 equity shares on 1^st May. Max, a shareholder, holding 5,000 shares paid the final call amount 2 along with the first call money. Now let me show the journal entry to record calls-in-advance.

In the Balance Sheet, I will show calls-in-advance in the following manner,

The calls-in-advance of 10,000 is shown under the Equities and Liabilities side of the balance sheet under the head current liabilities and sub-head other current liabilities. It will be shown as a liability till the final call money becomes due. The amount received by the company from Max is shown on the Assets side of the balance sheet under head current assets and under the sub-head cash and cash equivalents.