Subsidiary Ledgers the General Ledger and Control Accounts

Abstract

It is a usual practice in the field of accounting and finance to record business transactions that occur in organization on source documents, classify them in various day books and eventually record them in ledgers. Some transactions may be recorded in impersonal accounts while others may be recorded in personal accounts of customers and suppliers. In larger organizations in particular it seems impractical to maintain volumes of personal accounts of customers and suppliers for the purpose of preparing financial accounts. The title of this article is therefore the general ledger and control accounts and focus on how the general ledger is used to eliminate the volumes of personal accounts of customers and suppliers for the purpose of preparing financial accounts by using what is referred to as control accounts.

The details in this article are entirely collected through secondary research due to the specialized nature of the paper. Reference was specifically made from scholarly articles in accounting and finance, various text books in accounting and finance, and journals from professional bodies such as AAT, ACCA and CIMA.