Notice that the balances in interest revenue and service revenue are now zero and are ready to accumulate revenues in the next period. The Income Summary account has a credit balance of $10,240 (the revenue sum). Now, it’s time to close the income summary to the retained earnings (since we’re dealing with a company, not a small business or sole proprietorship). Expense accounts have a debit balance, so you’ll have to credit their respective balances and debit income summary in order to close them. This time period, called the accounting period, usually reflects one fiscal year. However, your business is also free to handle closing entries monthly, quarterly, or every six months.
What are Temporary and Permanent Accounts?
To close that, we debit Service Revenue for the full amount and credit Income Summary for the same. As a result, the temporary accounts will begin the following accounting year with zero balances. On the other hand, if the cost exceeds the income, a net loss occurs.
- In summary, the accountant resets the temporary accounts to zero by transferring the balances to permanent accounts.
- Since the income summary account is only a transitional account, it is also acceptable to close directly to the retained earnings account and bypass the income summary account entirely.
- If your business is a sole proprietorship or a partnership, your next step will be to close your income summary account.
- This transaction increases your capital account and zeros out the income summary account.
How to Post Closing Entries
The Statement shows Cash’s business transactions, whether inflow or outflow. Dividends are paid by Cash, so the transaction balance of paid tips would be demonstrated under Financial Activities. The cost of goods sold is an account that displays the balance of the total cost amount that the company used to produce the products sold.
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Closing, or clearing the balances, means returning the account to a zero balance. Having a zero balance in these accounts is important so a company can compare performance across periods, particularly with income. It also helps the company keep thorough records of account balances affecting retained earnings. Revenue, expense, and dividend accounts affect retained earnings and are closed so they can accumulate new balances in the next period, which is an application of the time period assumption. First, all the various revenue account balances are transferred to the temporary income summary account. This is done through a journal entry that debits revenue accounts and credits the income summary.
Close all revenue and gain accounts
You see that you earned $120,000 this year in revenue and had expenses for rent, electricity, cable, internet, gas, and food that totaled $70,000. However, if the company also wanted to keep year-to-date information from month accounting for lawyers to month, a separate set of records could be kept as the company progresses through the remaining months in the year. For our purposes, assume that we are closing the books at the end of each month unless otherwise noted.
Closing your accounting books consists of making closing entries to transfer temporary account balances into the business’ permanent accounts. The income summary account is a temporary account solely for posting entries during the closing process. It is a holding account for revenues and expenses before they are transferred to the retained earnings account.
Step #2: Close Expense Accounts
The closing entry will debit both interest revenue and service revenue, and credit Income Summary. Closing entries are journal entries made at the end of an accounting period, that transfer temporary account balances into a permanent account. You can report retained earnings either on your balance sheet or income statement.
The $1,000 net profit balance generated through the accounting period then shifts. In this case, if you paid out a dividend, the balance would be moved to retained earnings from the dividends account. Once this has been completed, a post-closing trial balance will be reviewed to ensure accuracy.
Eric is an accounting and bookkeeping expert for Fit Small Business. He has a CPA license in the Philippines and a BS in Accountancy graduate at Silliman University. Notice how only the balance in retained earnings has changed and it now matches what was reported as ending retained earnings in the statement of retained earnings and the balance sheet.
This is an optional step in the accounting cycle that you will learn about in future courses. Steps 1 through 4 were covered in Analyzing and Recording Transactions and Steps 5 through 7 were covered in The Adjustment Process. Well, dividends are not part of the income statement because they are not considered an operating expense.
Revenue, Expense, Income Summary, and Dividend are referred to as REID. To begin the process, you must have prepared three crucial pieces of information. First, it would help if you found the total balances of all the Revenue, Expense, and Dividends. Permanent Accounts are the opposite of Temporary Accounts as they are not closed at the end of the fiscal year, and their balances are carried over to the next fiscal year.
If the Post-Closing Trial Balance is not balanced and the Pre-Closing Trial Balance is balanced, then there were errors in the Closing Entry Process. The following would be an example of a trial balance; you can see that there are no temporary accounts and that all accounts have a natural number balance. The Third Step of Closing Entries is closing the Income Summary Account. Now, if you realize from steps 1 & 2, the balance of the Income Summary is also the same amount as the Net Income. As stated before, Income Summary is a temporary account and would also be closed. Before starting the Closing Entry Process, you must ensure that all the information and balances are correctly entered in the general ledger and financial statements.
After the closing journal entry, the balance on the drawings account is zero, and the capital account has been reduced by 1,300. The purpose of the income summary is to show the net income (revenue less expenses) of the business in more detail before it becomes part of the retained earnings account balance. The closing journal entries example comprises of opening and closing balances. Opening entries include revenue, expense, Depreciation etc., while closing entries include closing balance of revenue, liability, Depreciation etc.
This means that the current balance of these accounts is zero, because they were closed on December 31, 2018, to complete the annual accounting period. Companies are required to close their books at the end of each fiscal year so that they can prepare their annual financial statements and tax returns. Our discussion here begins with journalizing and posting the closing entries (Figure 5.2).
This is no different from what will happen to a company at the end of an accounting period. A company will see its revenue and expense accounts set back to zero, but its assets and liabilities will maintain a balance. In summary, the accountant resets the temporary accounts to zero https://www.business-accounting.net/ by transferring the balances to permanent accounts. The last closing entry reduces the amount retained by the amount paid out to investors. If your revenues are greater than your expenses, you will debit your income summary account and credit your retained earnings account.
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