Page 151 - Accounting Principles (A Business Perspective)

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Company are on the left portion of the work sheet. Usually, only those accounts with balances as of the end of the
accounting period are listed. (Some accountants do list the entire chart of accounts, even those with zero balances.)
Assume you are MicroTrain's accountant. You list the Retained Earnings account in the trial balance even though it

has a zero balance to (1) show its relative position among the accounts and (2) indicate that December 2010 is the
first month of operations for this company. Next, you enter the balances of the ledger accounts in the Trial Balance
columns. The accounts are in the order in which they appear in the general ledger: assets, liabilities, stockholders'
equity, dividends, revenues, and expenses. Then, total the columns. If the debit and credit column totals are not
equal, an error exists that must be corrected before you proceed with the work sheet.
As you learned in Chapter 3, adjustments bring the accounts to their proper balances before accountants
prepare the income statement, statement of retained earnings, and balance sheet. You enter these adjustments in

the Adjustments columns of the work sheet. Also, you cross-reference the debits and credits of the entries by
placing a key number or letter to the left of the amounts. This key number facilitates the actual journalizing of the
adjusting entries later because you do not have to rethink the adjustments to record them. For example, the number
(1) identifies the adjustment debiting Insurance Expense and crediting Prepaid Insurance. Note in the Account
Titles column that the Insurance Expense account title is below the trial balance totals because the Insurance
Expense account did not have a balance before the adjustment and, therefore, did not appear in the trial balance.
Work sheet preparers often provide brief explanations at the bottom for the keyed entries as in Exhibit 20.
Although these explanations are optional, they provide valuable information for those who review the work sheet
later.

The adjustments (which were discussed and illustrated in Chapter 3) for MicroTrain Company are:

Accounting Principles: A Business Perspective 152 A Global Text