How, when and why do you prepare closing entries?

In order to close out your expense accounts, you will need to debit the income summary account, and credit each line item expense listed in the trial balance, which reduces the expense account balances to zero. You begin the closing process by transferring revenue and expense account balances to the income summary account, a temporary account used specifically to transfer revenue and expense account balances. Having just described the basic closing entries, we must also point out that a practicing accountant rarely uses any of them, since these steps are handled automatically by any accounting software that a company uses. Instead, the basic closing step is to access an option in the software to close the reporting period. Doing so automatically populates the retained earnings account for you, and prevents any further transactions from being recorded in the system for the period that has been closed.

Like all trial balances, the post-closing trial balance has the job of verifying that the debit and credit totals are equal. The post-closing trial balance has one additional job that the other trial balances do not have. The post-closing trial balance How, When And Why Do You Prepare Closing Entries? is also used to double-check that the only accounts with balances after the closing entries are permanent accounts. If there are any temporary accounts on this trial balance, you would know that there was an error in the closing process.

What are closing entries and why are they necessary?

Closing entries for revenue accounts will include a debit to the revenue account, zeroing it out with an offsetting credit to the income summary account. Subsequently, another closing entry will transfer the net debit or credit balance from the income summary account to the retained earnings account. All temporary accounts must be reset to zero at the end of the accounting period. The income summary account then transfers the net balance of all the temporary accounts to retained earnings, which is a permanent account on the balance sheet.

For example, if a company has $12,000,000 in revenue for the year, it will debit Revenue for $12,000,000, bringing the balance in that account to zero, and credit the Income Summary account for the same amount. You are a newly hired accountant for Boss Consultants Inc (“Boss”), a consulting firm located in Chicago. Boss just started https://kelleysbookkeeping.com/organic-revenue-growth-definition/ its business this year as a simple operation that offers a premium, boutique service. It is now the end of the first quarter, and the company must prepare financial statements for an upcoming bank loan application. You are in charge of closing the books, and you are confident since you are a master of closing entries.

Change Management

These accounts carry forward their balances throughout multiple accounting periods. On the statement of retained earnings, we reported the ending balance of retained earnings to be $15,190. We need to do the closing entries to make them match and zero out the temporary accounts.

Temporary accounts are used to accumulate income statement activity during a reporting period. The use of closing entries resets the temporary accounts to begin accumulating new transactions in the next period. Otherwise, the balances in these accounts would be incorrectly included in the totals for the following reporting period. Below are examples of closing entries that zero the temporary accounts in the income statement and transfer the balances to the permanent retained earnings account. The income summary account balance depends on whether or not the business in question earns or loses money during the accounting period being closed.

Accounting Business and Society

BE3-13 (L08) Assume that Best Buy made a December 31 adjusting entry to debit Salaries and Wages Expense and credit Salaries and Wages Payable for $4,200 for one of its departments. Prepare Best Buy’s (a) January 1 reversing entry; (b) January 2 entry (assuming the reversing entry was prepared); and (c) January 2 entry (assuming the reversing entry was not prepared). Clear the balance of the revenue account by debiting revenue and crediting income summary. Notice how only the balance in retained earnings has changed and it now matches what was reported as ending retained earnings in the statement of retained earnings and the balance sheet. This transaction increases your capital account and zeros out the income summary account. Since we credited income summary in Step 1 for $5,300 and debited income summary for $5,050 in Step 2, the balance in the income summary account is now a credit of $250.

The closing process in accounting prepares accounting books for a new fiscal period by resetting income statement account balances to zero. This is done through a four-step process often known by the acronym REID (Revenue, Expenses, Income Summary, Dividends). To further clarify this, balances are closed to ensure all revenues and expenses are recorded in the proper period and then start over the following period. The revenue and expense accounts should start at zero each period because we are measuring how much revenue is earned and expenses incurred during the period.

What are examples of closing entries?

This is contrary to what is normally done, as Bob has made a net loss for the period. Therefore, this entry will ensure that the balance has been transferred on the balance sheet. To close the income summary account to the retained earnings account as mentioned earlier, we need to debit the income summary account and credit retained earnings account.

• This will ensure that the balances of those expenses account are transferred to the income summary account.
• These are general account ledgers that record transactions over the period and accounting cycle.
• Closing entries differ from other journal entries in that they are used only at the end of the accounting period.
• A trial balance is a report that can be run to verify that the total debits for an accounting period equal the total credits for the same.