Question

Sarasota Company has a balance of $2,200 in Allowance for Doubtful Accounts before adjustment. The estimated uncollectibles under the percentage-of-receivables basis is $5,100. Explain the adjustment.

Answer 1

Answer:

Debit : Allowance for doubtful debts = $2900

Credit : Accounts receivables = $2900

Explanation:

An account for allowance for doubtful debts is a contra account created, predicting that certain debtors will not be able to pay for the goods and services they purchased. This may be based on historical experiences. Doubtful debts aren’t officially uncollectible, it is simply an estimation made, but bad debts are, where you have officially written off a certain accounts receivable as uncollectible.

An allowance for doubtful debts is recorded in the balance sheet, directly under accounts receivables. Bad debts are recorded as an expense in the income statement. When there is an allowance for doubtful debts, the bad debts account is debited and the allowance for doubtful debts account is credited.

According to the question, the balance was $2,200 (Cr) in the allowance for doubtful debts account. The initial expected amount for allowance for doubtful debts was $5100 (Cr). This means that the difference was the amount that was declared as uncollectible and officially written off i.e. bad debts. Thus $2900 ($5100 -$2200) would have been confirmed as bad debts.

The entry to record the above transaction is:

Debit : Allowance for doubtful debts = $2900

Credit : Accounts receivables = $2900