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Bad Debt

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3) - DISTINCTION BETWEEN BAD DEBT AND PROVISION FOR DOUBTFUL DEBT
Sales consist of cash and credit sales but sales on credit hold a large proportion in many businesses. Therefore, the business is facing the problem of bad debt which will occurs when debtors fail to settle their payment for items sold on credit. A bad debt is an amount that is written off by the business as a loss to the business and classified as an expense because the debt owed to the business is unable to be collected, and all reasonable efforts have been exhausted to collect the amount owed. (Wizznotes) This situation will occurs when the debtor has declared bankruptcy. The bad debt must be charged to profit and loss as an expense when calculating the profit or loss of …show more content…

An entity may not be able to its balances outstanding in respect of certain receivables. (Accounting-Simplified.com). Those receivables refer as Irrecoverable Debts or Bad Debts in accountancy. For instant, customer going bankrupt, trade dispute or fraud could cause the bad debts increase.
-THE EFFECTS IF A COMPANY DOES NOT ESTIMATE ALLOWANCE FOR DOUBTFUL DEBT.
Accounting is generally intended to show a correlation between all financial aspects of business transactions. (Neil Kokemuller). It runs the risk of counting money earned but not collected when company records revenue from sales paid for with credit. The likelihood of this risk is adjusted by the bad-debt allowance. Misalignment between revenues earned in one period and the unpaid debt that result later on would happen due to the failure to use bad-debt allowance. Significant cuts to revenue in later period would happen in the company.
-THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MATCHING CONCEPT AND THE NEED TO ESTIMATE UNCOLLECTABLE DEBTORS ACCOUNT.
Estimation of the amount of bad debt is typically based on historical experience, debit the bad debt expense account and credit provision for doubtful debts account. This entry should be made in the same period when it bill a customer, so that the all applicable expenses are matched with the revenues (as per the matching

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