Personal Accounts: The accounts of persons, firms, companies, etc. are personal accounts. There is a further classification to personal accounts- Accounts of Natural Persons: The transactions relating to individual human beings fall under this category. For Example, accounts of Joseph, Richard, MorrRead more
Personal Accounts: The accounts of persons, firms, companies, etc. are personal accounts. There is a further classification to personal accounts-
- Accounts of Natural Persons: The transactions relating to individual human beings fall under this category. For Example, accounts of Joseph, Richard, Morris, etc.
- Accounts of Artificial Persons: The transactions relating to firms, organizations, companies, institutions, associations, etc. fall under this category. For Example, Oil India Ltd, Symbiosis college, Assam Tea company, etc.
- Representative Personal Accounts: The transactions relating to certain person or a group of persons, although the name of the concerned person or persons are not mentioned in the account head, such types of accounts come under this head. Such type of accounts generally include outstanding accounts or prepaid accounts. For Example, accounts like wages outstanding, outstanding salary, commission received in advance, salary prepaid, etc.
Note: When any Prefix or Suffix is used before/ after any nominal account head, such account is classified as Representative personal account under traditional approach.
For Example, Salary A/c is a nominal account whereas salary outstanding A/c is a personal account as the word outstanding is being used as a prefix to Salary A/c.
The Accounting rule for Personal Account is –
Debit the Receiver of the benefit.
Credit the Giver of the benefit.
Real Account: The transactions relating to tangible things i.e. the things that can be seen, touched and physically exchanged and the intangible things that cannot be seen, touched but the presence can be felt comes under this category. For Example, tangible things like Cash, goods, building, machinery, etc. and intangible things like goodwill, patent, trademarks, etc.
The Accounting rule for Real Account is –
Debit what comes in.
Credit what goes out.
Nominal Accounts: The transactions relating to losses, expenses, incomes and gains comes under this category. For Example, Rent paid, wages paid, commission received, interest paid/ received, etc.
The Accounting rule for Nominal Account is –
Debit Expenses and Losses.
Credit Gains and Incomes.
Let the business in our example be X Trading. The 15 transactions are as follows: 1st April - X Trading started its business with Rs. 10,000 cash and furniture of Rs. 5,000. 5th April - Purchased 1,000 units of goods for Rs. 1,000 in cash from Ram. 10th April – Bought stationery for Rs. 100 in cash.Read more
Let the business in our example be X Trading. The 15 transactions are as follows:
We will prepare the journal, ledgers and the trial balance from the above transactions.
Journal
Journal is known as the book of primary entry or book of original entry. It is because every transaction is recorded in form of journal entries in the journal. Every journal entry affects at least two accounts (dual effect). A transaction has to be a monetary transaction otherwise it cannot be recorded as a journal entry.
The procedure of recording transactions as journal entries is simple if we follow the modern rules of accounting.
So first we have to identify which and what type of account does a transaction affect. The types of accounts are:
Ledger
Ledgers are known as the books of principal entry or book of final entry. All the journal entries recorded in the journal are posted to the ledgers. A Ledger is where the entries related to a particular account are recorded. For example, all the transactions related to salary will be recorded in the salary account ledger.
It is very important to prepare the ledger to arrive at the balance of each account in the books of concern so that it can prepare its trial balance.
The procedure of posting journal entries in the ledger account is done is as follows:
The ledgers are as follows:
Trial Balance
The trial balance is not a part of the books of accounts. It is just a statement prepared to check the arithmetical accuracy of the books of the accounts. It also helps to know about the omission and posting mistakes. It is prepared after the ledger accounts have been drawn and their balances have been ascertained.
The balance of all the ledger accounts is posted on either side of the trial balance. Debit balance of the account on the debit side and credit balance of the account on the credit side.
Also, the closing stock from the financial statements of the previous year is posted on the debit side of the trial balance as opening stock to account for the stock with the business at the beginning of the financial year.
Following is the trial balance of X trading:

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