#journal-entries
Master journal entry creation and accounting transactions
A bounced check reverses the deposit and reopens the receivable — book the NSF fee as its own expense and apply the redeposit to the invoice, never to revenue.
A credit memo reduces what a customer owes and a debit memo increases it — both correct an invoice without deleting it, so the audit trail survives.
Under ASC 323, dividends from a 20–50% stake are not income — they reduce the investment. Here are the three journal entries and the basis-difference trap.
A rolling reserve is your revenue held as restricted cash, not a fee: book the gross sale, debit Funds Held in Reserve, and post releases as asset transfers.
Federal student loan wage garnishment resumed in 2026 and needs no court order. Employers must withhold up to 15% of disposable earnings while leaving the worker at least $217.50 a week (30 times the federal minimum wage), remit with the case number each pay period, never fire an employee over a single garnishment, and book withholdings to a Garnishments Payable liability account rather than an expense.
A returnless refund is a sales allowance, not a return. No inventory comes back, so nothing gets restocked and COGS stays put. This guide gives the per-SKU break-even math for when letting a customer keep a $40 item beats paying return shipping, the exact double-entry bookings for restocked returns, keep-it refunds and unsellable returns, the sales-tax posting, fraud guardrails, and the three metrics that show whether the policy is working.
How to accrue unused PTO as a liability month by month under ASC 710, calculate it with payroll taxes, book the journal entries, and apply the three state-law buckets that decide whether you must cash out vacation at separation.
A 3PL never owns your inventory — it stays on your balance sheet at cost until a customer buys it. Map the fee stack (receiving, storage, pick/pack, returns) to a chart of accounts, post the five journal entries you actually need, reconcile WMS on-hand to your ledger monthly, and apply LCNRV write-downs to aged stock under ASC 330.
U.S. retailers lost $90–112 billion to inventory shrinkage in the latest reporting cycle, an average shrink rate near 1.6% of sales. This guide shows small retailers how to book shrink in a dedicated expense account instead of burying it in COGS — with the exact journal entries, cycle-counting schedules, materiality thresholds, and the process fixes behind the ~70% of shrink that isn't theft.
Business credit card cash back is a rebate, not taxable income — unless it's a no-spend sign-up or referral bonus. This guide shows the two ways to book rewards (contra-expense vs. other income), with journal entries, the earned-vs-redeemed timing choice, and the IRS logic behind each.
Workers' comp dividend checks and retro-rating adjustments arrive 6–30 months after a policy expires. Dividends are discretionary — book them as a reduction of insurance expense when declared, never accrued in advance. Retro adjustments are contractual — accrue the estimated premium as a liability in the period the losses occurred, then true up at each 6-, 18-, and 30-month adjustment.
Under ASC 606, a service-type extended warranty is a separate performance obligation — the price must be allocated at standalone selling price and recognized as deferred revenue, amortized ratably over the coverage term, not booked as revenue upfront.
