Chapter 2 Analyzing Transactions 25
• What is the difference between journalizing and posting?
• What is the difference between an expense and a liability?
• Aren’t assets and revenue the same? If a business works for someone and gets paid, aren’t Cash and
Revenue exactly the same thing?
• Aren’t expenses and liabilities the same? If a business gets a utility bill and hasn’t paid it yet, aren’t
Utility Expense and Utility Payable exactly the same account?
• Why do they call it a credit card? Who is crediting what?
• “I work in a bank and we use debits and credits, but you have them all reversed in the book. The bank
where I work does everything exactly the opposite.”
• Why can’t we just record the transactions directly into the ledger?
and subtract from their bank account?
OBJECTIVE 1
Describe the characteristics of an account and a chart of accounts.
SYNOPSIS
In the previous chapter, transactions were recorded using the accounting equation format. Exhibit 1 presents
a summary of the transactions we analyzed in the previous chapter for NetSolutions. This chapter
demonstrates how to record transactions using accounts. Accounts make it easy to track increases and
decreases in a company’s assets, liabilities, stockholders’ equity, revenues, expenses, and dividends. For
example, NetSolutions will need 12 accounts, one for each of the financial statement items shown in Exhibit
1. Basically, accounts have two sides, a left side and a right side. Because the letter “T” has a left side and
a right side, the term “T account” is often used to refer to accounts. Debits are recorded on the left side of
the T, and credits are recorded on the right side of the T. The balance of the account is the amount of the
difference between the debits and the credits that have been entered into an account. All the accounts used
in a business are grouped together in a ledger. A list of the accounts maintained in the ledger is known as a