You must first understand Black Evan Engram Jersey , or accept the first main principle of double entry bookkeeping before we start, and this applies equally to making them in your accounting software or wether you are making them in a book by hand Black Will Hernandez Jersey , and that is ?


For every entry made there must be an equal and opposite entry made somewhere else and when you have finished making your entries they must all add up to zero. Don't worry most packages will make most of these day to day entries for you.


Sounds weird - not really. The whole principal is logical and goes back to the days when all books where done manually and by making all of the entries add up to zero we knew we had correctly entered our numbers. We may not have entered them into the right slot but at least we had created the basis of being on the right track.


Even though your accounting software will, in most cases Black Eli Manning Jersey , make most of the entries for you, you must understand the principle behind it.


We mentioned above that every entry needs an equal and opposite entry somewhere else so lets use sales as the beginning of our understanding of this concept.


We sell a product Black Lawrence Taylor Jersey , or service to Bill Brown for $100.00. Now it is quite easy to understand that this gives us a credit of $100.00 to our business but we also need to create an equal and opposite entry somewhere else so if we took the $100 and put it in the bank we would debit the bank account in the accounting software ledger.


In most cases one side of the entry would go to the Profit and Loss Section and the other to the Balance Sheet section. The dividing line between the two is often called the BOTTOM LINE and the last account in the Profit and Loss section will be called NET PROFIT


I know you might be thinking that that is a lot of baloney because when we look at our bank statement we see that the money we have deposited is shown as a credit.


Quite correct but we are talking about a double entry bookkeeping system here and not bank statements. We debit money into the bank.


The entries would look like -


Sales Account (Profit & Loss) 100.00 Credit
Bank Account (Balance Sheet) 100.00 Debit


If we add these two entries together they will add up to zero. We have fulfilled the basic criteria of equal and opposite entries as well as them adding to zero.


You'll also note that one side is to the Profit and Loss section and the other to the Balance Sheet section.


As many of our sales could be to people that have an account with us and therefore owe us (Trade Debtors). Let's assume that Bill Brown is one of those - therefore the entries would look like -


Sales Account (Profit & Loss) 100.00 Credit
Trade Debtors (Balance Sheet)100.00 Debit


(Trade Debtors - people that owe us money)


Again, the criteria have been met.


So far we have looked at a simple transaction where one of the entries Black Odell Beckham Jr Jersey , Sales, went into the profit and Loss and the other into the Balance Sheet Black Saquon Barkley Jersey , Bank or Trade Debtors. Both the bank and trade debtors are asset accounts.


Remember we talked about the Bottom Line earlier well you could say that one of the entries went above the bottom line (into the Profit and Loss section) and the other below the bottom line (into the Balance Sheet section)


In either of the above examples if you are using a sales module in your accounting software then the accounting software should make both ledger entries for you automatically.


Where an entry goes above the line and its equal and opposite entry goes below the line the transaction typically affects your net wealth. In the example if the $100.00 sale was for a service we offered and had no cost attached to it then we have increased our wealth by $100.00.


There is another set of transactions that don't affect our wealth or in fact change it at all.


Let's assume that some time later Bill Brown pays us the $100.00 he owes us. What happens now?


Originallythe accounting software made the opposite entry to sales as a debit to the trade debtor's account in the ledger. So we currently have a $100.00 debit in our asset account (trade debtors-people owing us money).


When the cheque arrives from Bill Brown we need to transfer the $100.00 from the trade debtor's account in the ledger to the bank account in the accounting software's ledger.


Originally the accounting software debited Trade debtors to get the money into the account so now we have to credit that account and make an equal and opposite entry to the bank account in the ledger.


The entries would therefore look like -


Trade Debtors (Balance Sheet) 100.00 Credit Bank Account (Balance Sheet) 100.00 Debit


(Trade Debtors - people that owe us money)


So, both of these entries are below the line in the balance sheet. Both are asset accounts - The bank account and the trade debtor's account.


When the accounting software made the entry when we received Bill's cheque we actually didn't change our net wealth in any way.


The total of our assets didn't change in any way either. We simply transformed one asset type into another. (someone owing us money to cash in the bank) Same difference Black Darius Slayton Jersey , except we now have the actual cash in our possession instead of someone owing us.


Again your accounting software should have made all of the entries for you into the general ledger, initially when you enter the customers purchase by way of doing a sales invoice to the customer and then when you enter the customer's payment into the accounting software.


Let's look at what happens when you make a purchase -


You buy some office stationery for $100.00 and pay by cheque. We can easily accept that we have created a debit to our business for $100.00. So how would the entries look -


Stationery Account (Profit & Loss) 100.00 Debit Bank Account (Balance Sheet)100.00 Credit


From this we see that one of the entries is above the line into the