What is a suspense account?

suspense account examples

When you buy a fixed asset on a payment plan but just don’t receive it until you fully pay it off, use a suspense account. Close the suspense account and open a separate asset account once you’ve made the final payment and received the item. The suspense account is classified as a current asset, since it is most commonly used to store payments related to accounts receivable. It is possible to also have a liability suspense account, to contain accounts payable whose disposition is still being decided. If so, the liability suspense account is classified as a current liability.

Toward the end of the accounting period, all discrepancies are sorted and accounted for to their permanent entities. A suspense account is an account where you record unclassified transactions. The account temporarily holds entries while you decide how you will classify them. A suspense account can also hold information about discrepancies as you gather more data.

Suspense account and accounting software

In any case, every effort should be made to eliminate all unidentified transactions held in the suspense account by the end of the fiscal year, otherwise the annual financial statements will be inaccurate. Even if there is no timeline set by regulatory authorities for the clear-out process, businesses routinely carry out monthly or quarterly suspense account reconciliations. Therefore, it is vital to have a process in place to clear out the suspense account https://www.bookstime.com/articles/suspense-account on regular basis so that all of the suspense account entries are moved into their designated accounts to zero out the suspense balance. A customer paid an outstanding $1,000 invoice in two partial payments of $500. At times, all the required details for a particular transaction are not available but it still needs to be recorded in order to keep the accounting books updated. Later, you decide to bill the supplies account of the purchasing department.

When she identifies the correct account for the transaction, she will move it from the suspense account to the right account. For example, if the homeowner pays less than the required monthly payment, the bank can place these funds into the suspense account as they figure out what this amount is in reference to. This suspense account allows the bank to hold the funds until they can determine how to apply this partial payment to their current balance. General suspense accounts are used in a business to place funds temporarily. Two different types of suspense accounts include the mortgage suspense account and the brokerage suspense account.

Free Debits and Credits Cheat Sheet

Accordingly, there should be a daily measurement of the balance in the suspense account, which the controller uses as the trigger for ongoing investigations. When the business receives a payment that it does not know how to categorize, the transaction is temporarily placed in the suspense account. While other trial balance errors do exist (e.g., error of omission, commission, principle, original entry, reversal of entries), they do not affect the suspense account. A suspense account is a temporary account where entries with discrepancies and doubtful factors are parked.

  • In any case, every effort should be made to eliminate all unidentified transactions held in the suspense account by the end of the fiscal year, otherwise the annual financial statements will be inaccurate.
  • A trial balance is a worksheet with totals of all accounts in the general ledger.
  • Once the accounting staff investigates and clarifies the purpose of this type of transaction, it shifts the transaction out of the suspense account and into the correct account(s).
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Posted by André Araújo