When you pay your rent, you debit your account with the money you owe. The normal balance is defined as the balance which would show either credit or debt when all the data from the journal is extracted. The normal balance is calculated by the accounting equation, which says that the assets of a company are equal to the sum of liabilities and shareholder’s equity. For accounts payable, the usual trend for the normal balance is usually credit. Certain types of accounts have natural balances in financial accounting systems.

They can be current liabilities such as accounts payable and accruals, or long-term liabilities such as bonds payable or mortgages payable. As noted earlier, expenses are almost always debited, so we debit Wages Expense, increasing its account balance. Accounts payable are a type of liability, meaning they are a debt your company owes.

Debits and Credits Chart

Certain accounts are used for valuation purposes and are displayed on the financial statements opposite the normal balances. The debit entry to a contra account has the opposite effect as it would to a normal account. A dangling debit is a debit balance with no offsetting credit balance that would allow it to be written off. It occurs in financial accounting and reflects discrepancies in a company’s balance sheet, as well as when a company purchases goodwill or services to create a debit. Within IU’s KFS, debits and credits can sometimes be referred to as “to” and “from” accounts.

For the revenue accounts in the income statement, debit entries decrease the account, while a credit points to an increase in the account. In a general ledger, or any other accounting journal, one always sees columns marked “debit” and “credit.” The debit column is always to the left of the credit column. Next to the debit and credit columns is usually a “balance” column. Under this column, the difference between the debit and the credit is recorded. If the debit is larger than the credit, the resultant difference is a debit, and this is listed as a numerical figure. If the credit is larger than the debit, the difference is a credit, and this is recorded as a negative number or, in accounting style, a number enclosed in parenthesis, as for example (500).

What is a Normal Balance in Accounting?

For example, an allowance for uncollectable accounts offsets the asset accounts receivable. Because the allowance is a negative asset, a debit actually decreases the allowance. A contra asset’s debit is the opposite of a normal account’s debit, which increases the asset. A normal balance is the expectation that a particular type of account will have either a debit or a credit balance based on its classification within the chart of accounts.

The contra accounts appear directly below the real account in the financial statements. The purpose of the Contra accounts is usually to offset the balance from the original account. A contra account, also known as a contrast account, is which is used in normal balance for accounts.

Accounts Payable Debit or Credit: What is a Normal Balance?

The company paid $3,000 cash for the premium on an 18-month insurance policy. The company paid $1,200 cash for the just completed two-week salary of the receptionist. In terms of recordkeeping, debits are always recorded on the left side, as a positive number to reflect incoming money. By having normal balance of accounts many revenue accounts and a huge number of expense accounts, a company will be able to report detailed information on revenues and expenses throughout the year. The main products for which accounts payables are used by companies are raw materials, production equipment, and utilities.

It is possible for an account expected to have a normal balance as a debit to actually have a credit balance, and vice versa, but these situations should be in the minority. The normal balance for each account type is noted in the following table. Temporary accounts (or nominal accounts) include all of the revenue accounts, expense accounts, the owner’s drawing account, and the income summary account. Generally speaking, the balances in temporary accounts increase throughout the accounting year.