BUSA 100 - Introduction to Accounting
Chapter 8: Accounting for Purchases and Accounts Payable
Schmidt
Purpose: The purpose of this handout is to continue the discussion of special journals and move to the buying side of the house which includes accounting for purchase transactions and keeping track of accounts payable.
As stated in the previous chapter, there are two major sides of the house for merchandiser....the selling side which was discussed in Chapter 7, and the buying side which is the topic of this chapter.
Purchasing
procedures are described in your book. You should be familiar with these, as
well as the following documents:
Purchase Requisition
Purchase Order
Invoice
These are defined and examples are given on pages 248 and 249 of your text.
Some New Accounts:
Here is a summary of some of the new accounts that we will learn in this
chapter:
Purchases – Used to record all purchases of merchandise held for resale. This account is a cost of goods sold or expense account and is one of the largest expense accounts of a merchandiser. Like all expenses, this one has a normal debit balances, and will be shown on the income statement.
Freight In – Freight costs are significant to merchandisers. This account is also a cost of goods sold or an expense account. It will show up on the income statement. This account tracks the freight on incoming merchandise that we will resell. Sometimes merchandisers will call this account Transportation In.
Merchandise Inventory – This represents the stock of goods on hand at the end of the fiscal year. Don’t touch this account during the accounting cycle. We will talk more about it later.
Just a there are some contra accounts on the selling side, there are also some contra expenses (or contra purchases) accounts on the buying side.
Here they are:
As we discussed last time, a merchandiser has two basic functions: to buy and to sell. Above we discussed the sales process and learned how to record sales of merchandise on account in the sales journal. Now, we switch to the other side of the house: The buying side. Just as we discussed at the last class meeting, transactions must meet a specific set of criteria in order to be placed in a special journal. In order for a transaction to go in the common 3-column purchases journal, it must meet two criteria:
If a transaction does not meet these criteria, it
must be recorded in either a multi-column purchases journal, (discussed
later) which can handle a purchase of anything on account, or
elsewhere.
Most medium to large size firms have fairly large purchasing or procurement departments. These departments are responsible for obtaining the products that are to be sold at competitive prices. There are many documents that are used in the purchasing process. You should be familiar with these documents. Some of the more important ones are as follows:
To insure that we got what we ordered, many of
these documents are compared to each other to help determine that the
merchandise was received and that we have incurred a valid liability.
(More about this next semester.)
Freight costs are significant expense for merchandising firms. Freight in (sometimes called Transportation In at some firms) is debited for freight on incoming merchandise. There are two basic types of shipping terms. They are important to this chapter, but they will become even more important when you discuss the inventory chapter BUSA 101. They are as follows:
It is also important to note that when goods are
shipped FOB Shipping, freight can be either be paid up front by the
seller and then billed to the buyer, or the freight charges can be
directly billed by the freight company to the buyer. The concept of
freight charges is introduced in this chapter, but will be covered even
more thoroughly when we discuss the Cash Receipts Journal.
As shown in your text, this journal is used to
record the purchase of merchandise that is made on account. Just as we
did in the sales journal, we record each transaction as it occurs. Only
one summarizing entry is made to the G/L at the end of the month. You
show that the posting has been made by placing the account number in
parenthesis below the column totals.
Introducing the AP Subsidiary Ledger
Just as we discussed earlier, the problem with this
special journal is that it does not track balances due to others on an
individual level. (Remember in the sales journal how we had to track
balances due to us by the individual customer????. This is the flip
side.) For this reason, we keep track of amounts owed to our vendors or
suppliers by keeping records for each individual company. We do this
through the AP subsidiary ledger. This can be likened to a notebook with
one page for every vendor. The notebook is usually organized in
alphabetical order. It allows us to know how much we owe to the
individual suppliers at a glance. The sum of all the balances on the
cards in the notebook (the subsidiary ledger) should total up to the
controlling account, Accounts Payable in the general ledger when all
postings are up-to-date.
Don’t forget, because we are tracking individual
balances, you must remember that ANYTIME YOU TOUCH AN AP ACCOUNT FROM
NOW ON, YOU MUST UPDATE THE VENDOR’S CARD IN THE AP SUBSIDIARY LEDGER.
(Many students neglect to do this when entries are made in the general
journal for purchases returns and allowances.
The Balancing Act
To show that the equality exists between the
controlling account (AP in the GL) and the sum of the subsidiary
accounts, we prepare a Schedule of Accounts Payable. Simply take the
ending balances for the vendors in the subsidiary ledger, list them on a
schedule, add them up, and compare to the total AP balance in the GL.
More on Purchase Returns and Allowances
This is a new account used to track amounts
returned to our suppliers, or allowances given, for defective
merchandise. This is a contra purchases or contra expense account.
That means it will have a credit balance. It will eventually show up on
the income statement as a reduction to purchases. Most likely, returns
will be recorded in the general journal since they don’t meet the
criteria for the special journals we have discussed so far. Don’t
forget, however, that you still need to update the vendor’s individual
account anytime an AP account is touched.
A multi-column purchase journal
Some firms find that a regular 3-column purchases journal (containing columns for purchases, freight in, and AP) is not adequate for their needs. This is because with a 3-column journal, you can only record purchases of merchandise on account. With a multi-column purchases journal, the columns are expanded so that it can handle a purchase of ANYTHING ON ACCOUNT. This is achieved by adding on “Other Accounts” column. Some text will call this “Sundry Accounts”.) If you purchase something other than merchandise, you can use the far right column to write in the appropriate general ledger account to be charged. You must individually post any items appearing in this column to the general ledger and place the account number in the port ref column to the far right. Your text has decided to omit this presentation.
Calculating Net Purchases
Net purchases is the amount that a company has spent purchasing merchandise and includes freight. It is calculated as follows:
Purchases
Add Freight In
Delivered Cost of Purchases
Less Purchases Returns and Allowances
Net Delivered Cost of Purchases
See an example on page 261 of your text for more information