Question

The following data is taken from the books and records of Cink Co., which estimated its allowance for uncollectible accounts using the year-end aging of accounts receivable.

Allowance for uncollectible acounts, 1/1/20	$ 145,000
Uncollectible accounts written off, 11/30/20	92,500
Estimated uncollectible accounts per aging, 12/31/20	119,000

After the year-end adjustment, bad debt expense for 2020 should be $____________.

Answer 1

ANSWER: Bad debt expense for the year 2020 will be $ 66,500

Explanation:

There is a beginning credit balance of $145,000 in the allowance for uncollectible accounts. When uncollectible accounts are written off to the extent of $92,500 during the year, the journal entry would be passed by debiting allowance for uncollectible accounts and crediting accounts receivable. This will reduce the balance in the allowance for uncollectible accounts by $92,500. Hence the balance of allowance for uncollectible accounts will become $52,500 [ 145,000 - 92,500]. However, as per the ageing, the estimated ending uncollectible amount is $119,000. So in order to arrive at this balance, an additional bad debt expense will be accounted to the extend of $66,500 [119,000 - 52,500] by debiting bad debt expense a/c and crediting allowance for uncollectible accounts a/c. Hence the bad debt expense for the year 2020 will be $66,500. The ledger of Allowance for uncollectible accounts can be drawn as follows:

Particulars	Amount in $	Particulars	Amount in $
Accounts Receivable	92,500	Beginning Balance	145,000
		Bad debt expense	66,500
Ending Balance	119,000
	211,500		211,500