N400 : Accounting : Financial Statement of the Business Directly

Respond to the following:

1). As the bookkeeper of a new start-up company, you are responsible for keeping the chart of accounts up to date. At the end of each year, you analyze the accounts to verify that each account should be active for accumulation of costs, revenues, and expenses.

In July, the accounts payable (A/P) clerk asked you to open an account named New Expenses. You know that an account name should be specific and well defined, and you're afraid the A/P clerk might charge some expenses to the account that are inappropriate.

Why do you think the A/P clerk needs the New Expenses account? Who needs to know this information, and what action should you consider?

2). As the full-time bookkeeper, your job is to make any corrections to the general ledger accounts. Each correction needs the reason for the change and the effect on each account, whether it is an increase or decrease.

For the third time this month, a co-worker has recorded a cash receipt twice and wants you to record a correcting entry that will reverse the mistakes. The correcting entry will record a credit to the Cash account and a debit to the Sales account. Your co-worker has offered to buy you dinner for fixing this mistake.

What should you investigate before making a decision about the correcting entry? What is happening to the Cash account? Would you accept a dinner offer from your co-worker for fixing the mistake?

3). The supplies adjustment records the office supplies used for the month. A co-worker asks you to record a larger supplies adjustment compared to what is leftover so the extra supplies can be used at a nonprofit organization.

Would you do as your co-worker requests so the nonprofit organization can have these extra supplies? Why?

4). On the last day of the fiscal year, a co-worker asks you to cut a check for $2,000 as a miscellaneous expense for supplies to complete a project for a VIP customer today. You notice the invoice looks a little different from other invoices that are usually processed. You know that by preparing the closing entries tomorrow, the miscellaneous expense will be set to zero for the beginning of the year.

Should you write this check today and record the expense or write the check tomorrow? How would the company be affected if the check is written and the invoice ends up being erroneous?

Answer:

The case which is shown relates to a business which is newly established and the business has a bookkeeper who is responsible for maintaining the books of accounts enter and reconciles the balances of the ledger accounts. The case shows that in the month of July the Account Payable clerk of the business wants to open a new account which will have the name of the New Expense Account. The accounts which are created by the Account Payable Clerk is for some manipulation in the reporting process which can increase the creditors of the business. The bookkeeper is aware that the Account Payable Clerk might add some charges which are not related to the business and mostly likely related to personal interest of the Account Payable Clerk. The bookkeeper needs to inform the manager and the senior accountant of the business (Hatfield, 2014). The senior management needs to take necessary steps in order to ensure that the no such entry is passed and transaction posted in ledger accounts. The Account Payable Clerk then needs to justify the new account which he had intended to create. The management needs to impose severe consequence as the activity can be regarded as the highest level of misconduct in the business and can affect the financial statement of the business directly.

Part 2

As per the case which is provided in the assessment, the bookkeeper of the business is responsible for preparing and managing the ledger accounts of the business. Similarly, the bookkeeper is also responsible for making correction to any mistakes which can affect the financial statement of the business for the year. It is the job of the bookkeeper to pass rectifying journal entries to effective record the transaction which was previously done wrong in the books of accounts of the business.

In the situation one of the clerk has wrongly posted the cash receipts of the business twice which has affected the results which are shown in the financial statement of the business. The bookkeeper needs to firstly reverse the entry as the same has resulted in rise in the cash balance of the business. The bookkeeper also needs to investigate the sales balance which is also affected due to double entry system and in addition to this, the debtor balance as the same might be a credit sale (Das, 2013). Therefore, the reversing the entry is very important in order to cancel out the effect of the wrong entry and then pass the actual entry as per accounting regulations. The cash balance of the business gets affected by the wrong entry and the same is shown to be overstated which needs to be reversed in order to appropriately record the transaction of the business. The bookkeeper should not accept the offer of the clerk for dinner for fixing the mistake as the job profile of the bookkeeper includes rectification of wrong entries as shown in the case.

Part 3

As per the case which is shown, the business has the policy of recording the supplies of the business n supplies adjustment report. The case shows that one of the clerk wants to records the supply in excessive amount to be shown as same as leftovers of the business as the same is engaged in the business. The supplies which will be in excessive is to be provided for charity purpose.

The bookkeeper cannot allow such valuation of inventories of the business and the book keeper needs to follow the relevant accounting standard related. The bookkeeper cannot allow the supplies of business to be given away for charity purpose unless the top-level management approves the same. The bookkeeper can only donate the supplies of the business  and effectively make necessary changes in the financial statement of the business when the management of the company makes the decision to donate a part of the supplies of the business for donation to charitable institutes. Moreover, it is not the responsibility of the bookkeeper to make such decisions and the primary job of the bookkeeper is to record and maintain the ledgers accounts and the financial statement of the business.

Part 4

As per the case which is provided, the bookkeeper is requested to write a check of $ 2000 for a VIP customer. The date for which the clerk has requested a check is the last date of the financial year and the closing entries of the business have already been passed. In addition to this, the invoice for the check is a bit unusual than the normal checks which the bookkeeper dealt with earlier.

In such a situation, the bookkeeper should write the check the next day as all the closing entries of the financial statement have already been passed and the transaction has taken place on the last date of the financial year. The expenses which are miscellaneous in nature needs to be charged and recorded in the books of accounts for the next year. In case the check is written and the invoice for the same turns out to be an erroneous in nature the books of accounts will be affected and the profit for the year will also be affected severely along with balances of other accounts which are shown in the books of account of the business. The same will result in abnormal loss for the company for which the bookkeeper would be needed to record the loss and similarly post the same in the financial statements of the business.

Reference:

Das, S. C. (2013). Business accounting and financial management. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd..

Hatfield, H. R. (2014). Accounting: Its Principles and Some ofits Problems. In The Development of Accounting Theory (RLE Accounting) (pp. 21-29). Routledge.