SUBJECT

: PRINCIPLES OF ACCOUNTANCY

Q. WHAT IS AN ACCOUNT? GIVE THE MEANING OF DEBIT AND CREDIT.

An account is a summary of business transactions affecting a person or property or an income or an

expense. An account is a brief history of financial dealings of a particular man or in a particular item.
An account has two sides debit and credit. The left side is known as debit and the right side is known
as credit. Double entry book keeping means recording of both the receiving and giving aspects of every
transactions.
When an account receives a benefit, the account is debited. When an account gives a benefit, the
account is credited. These two aspects are denoted by the symbol debtor (Dr.) and creditor (Cr.) respectively.
The rules for debit and credit are formulated according to the types of accounts. The accounts can be divided
into three Personal, Real and Nominal.
Q. EXPLAIN THE CLASSIFICATION OF ACCOUNT.
Accounts can be divided into
1. Personal accounts
2. Impersonal accounts
Impersonal accounts can be further divided into real and nominal accounts. Thus, there are three kinds of
accounts maintained by a business.
1. Personal accounts: Accounts of persons with whom the business has dealings are known as personal
accounts. It takes the following form:
a) Natural persons: The name of an individual customers or suppliers. (e.g.) Mohan A/c, Shyam A/c,
Priya A/c.
b) Artificial persons or legal bodies: Firms accounts, limited companies accounts which relate to a
group of persons or firms or institutions.
c) Representative personal accounts: All accounts representing outstanding expenses and accrued or
prepaid income are personal accounts. (e.g.) Prepaid insurance, outstanding wages, salary, rent etc.
The proprietor being an individual, his capital account and his drawings account are also personal accounts.

Types of accounts
Personal

Natural

Artificial

Impersonal

Representative

Real

Tangible

Nominal

Intangible

Impersonal accounts: All those accounts which are not personal accounts.
1. Real accounts: Accounts relating to properties and assets which are owned by the business concern, real
accounts include tangible and intangible accounts. For example: Land, building. Goodwill purchases etc.
2. Nominal accounts: These accounts do not have any existence, form or shape. They relate to income and
expenses and gains and losses of a business concern. For example: Salary account, dividend account,
commission received, interest received account.
Golden rules of accounting
1. Personal accounts Debit the receiver
Credit the giver
2. Real account Debit what comes in
Credit what goes out
1

3. Nominal account -

Debit all expenses and losses

Credit all incomes and gains.
JOURNAL

Q.WHAT IS JOURNAL?

The term Journal is derived from the French word Jour means day. Journal therefore means a daily
record of business transactions.Journal is the prime book or books or original entry. Because all transactions
are first recorded in the journal. All transactions are entered in the order of their happening. i.e., date wise
(chronological order). Journalizing is an act of recording the debit and credit aspect of a business transaction in
journal. Narration is nothing but a brief explanation which is added after each journal entry.
The ledger folio column is completed when entries are posted to the ledger by entering the page number
of the ledger. Till posting (transferring) to the ledger takes place, the ledger folio column remains blank.
The account to be debited is written first, close to the left line in the particular column and ends with the
abbreviations Dr at the extreme right side of the particular columns.
Against this, the amount is written in the debit column. In the next line, the account to be credited is
written a few spaces away from the margin in the particular column to make it distinct from the debit account;
the credit account starts with the prefix to.
DATE

Specimen journal entry

PARTICULARS
LF DEBIT

CREDIT