Suspense account and Sales Ledger

Danielle Milton

I have a question where the Suspense account has a DR balance of 100. The question give four possible causes 2 involve a personal account, one the sales day book and the fourth the sales ledger.

According to the question understanding the sales ledger account by 100 is what has caused the suspense account to be opened with a DR 100. My understanding was the sales ledger balance is used to check the SLCA balance when reconciling the account for the trial balance. So the Sales Ledger balance never actually get's imported in to the TB. So even if the account is undercase it should not affect the TB as it never entered into it.

Now if the Sales Ledger is undercast this should cause it to be difference from the SLCA. When the Sales Ledger and SLCA are not equal it is meant to be investigated and corrected before the SLCA goes to the TB. So again it still should not affect the TB.

The only possible way I can see for an undercast Sales Ledger to affect the TB is if the SLCA is also undercast and this is not noticed while reconciling it because the Sales Ledger is also undercast. However, this means the suspense account is opened because the SLCA is undercast not the Sales Ledger so the question still does not make any sense.

Does anyone have any tips on this? I've got my exam Monday and I'm really confused by this. I'm using the BPP book accounts preoperation and it's question 11.14 on page 52 of the question bank.

Many thanks.

CeeJaySix

It sounds to me like it's probably just a bad bit of wording. Your reasoning above appears correct. To be honest I think you're over-reading the question - rather than focussing on the technical relationship of the SLCA/sales ledger (great that you noticed, but I think irrelevant here other than to demonstrate the amount of errors that seem to be in the texts!), have a look at the other answers. If none of them are 100 further in credit than they should be, then the SLA is the answer. If however one of the other answers would also be corrected by 100 debit, then by applying your reasoning above you can say it's not the SLA as that's not entered on the TB and therefore wouldn't create a suspense a/c (I'm assuming here none of the other answers would give the same result, otherwise it really is an error in the book!).