Trade accounts receivable active or passive?
Double-entry bookkeeping always addresses at least two accounts when company transactions are accounted for. In every balance sheet there are active and passive inventory accounts that maintain the inventory of assets and capital items in debit and credit. How are trade accounts receivable to be posted?
Since the principle of individual valuation applies when posting business transactions, receivables and payables cannot be offset against each other. A booking is to be made when a contractual partner has provided its service.
Trade accounts receivable are an accounting term
It is linked to the law of obligations on the basis of mutual contracts. From a legal point of view, a claim arises from a delivery or service as a contractually regulated claim to a consideration.
- However, you can only account for such a claim once you have delivered or performed in accordance with the contract. In principle, your contractual obligations are considered fulfilled when you have transferred burdens, benefits and risks to the buyer. The type of delivery and service determine the point in time at which the risk passes to the buyer.
- Claims such as tax refund claims are not based on mutual contracts. They are to be recorded under the item Other assets. Further legal regulations (HGB, GmbHG) require the delimitation of certain claims from trade accounts receivable.
Book the claims: active or passive
Basically, if the customer pays immediately, there is no claim against the customer. This always arises, for example, when you give your customers payment terms.
Every business case has an impact on the items on the balance sheet. And this even in ...
- Standard chart of accounts (SKR) are available for posting purposes for retail, banking, insurance and other sectors of the economy. The motor vehicle trade, for example, uses the SKR51, for dentists there is the SKR80, for associations and foundations there is the SKR49. Most of the time, the DATEV chart of accounts is used in practice.
- Trade accounts receivable for corporations are shown in the standard chart of accounts on G / L account 1200 in SKR04 and on G / L account 1400 in SKR03.
- Personal accounts, which also include active and passive inventory accounts, consist on the one hand of the supplier account on the right-hand side ("We have to pay". On the other hand, there is the customer account on the left ("The debtor should pay").
Processing of the basic questions
- Sales revenues arise from the sale of goods. These are returns. To do inventory accounts and income accounts. A sale on the payment term creates receivables. The sales tax arising from the sale is to be booked as a liability.
- The accounts in question are influenced by sales revenue (income account), receivables (active inventory account) and sales tax (passive inventory account). There is an increase in all three accounts. On the personal account (receivables) the posting is made in debit, on the other two accounts in credit.
The posting record would be in a posting program, customer to general ledger account. The sales tax account is posted automatically.
