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View Full Version : Need help with Accounting Question! (URGENT)


Keetla
Jul 26th, 2008, 01:18 PM
Hi everyone!

I'm very sorry to post it here but I'm a little desperate. I am taking an long-distance Financial Accounting I Course and am doing some last minute studying. My exam is Monday (07/26). I'm having extreme difficulty understanding the logic of a set of problems (WebCT) and there are very slim chances that my "learning support" via email will see my help request before my exam! I know there are a lot of accountants and accounting students on here, so I'm hoping that somebody can explain this to me.

Here is the background information provided: (I apologize, it's hard to get tabled information across in a forum post)

An inexperienced bookkeeper prepared the following trial balance, which does not balance:

Yu Chen Limited
Trial Balance
December 31, 20XX

Account Title / Debit ($) / Credit ($)
Cash / $17,600 /
Prepaid Insurance / / 3,500
Accounts Payable / / 3,000
Unearned Revenue / 2,200 /
Common Shares / / 10,000
Retained Earnings / / 7,000
Dividends / / 4,500
Service Revenue / / 25,600
Salaries Expense / 18,600 /
Rent Expense / / 2,400
Income Tax Expense / 1,200 /
TOTAL / $39,600 / $56,000

The first thing I did was to correct the trial balance to the following:

Yu Chen Limited
Trial Balance
December 31, 20XX

Account Title / Debit ($) / Credit ($)
Cash / $17,600 /
Prepaid Insurance / 3,500 /
Accounts Payable / / 3,000
Unearned Revenue / / 2,200
Common Shares / / 10,000
Retained Earnings / / 7,000
Dividends / 4,500 /
Service Revenue / / 25,600
Salaries Expense / 18,600 /
Rent Expense / 2,400 /
Income Tax Expense / 1,200 /
TOTAL / $47,800 / $47,800

Here are the questions with the corresponding answers:

a) How much capital was invested in the practice on December 31, 20B?
Answer: $14,700

b) Assuming the December 31, 20B balance in the common stock account was $20,000, what would be the balance on December 31, 20C?
Answer: $27,500

c) Assuming the December 31, 20C balance in the common stock account was $22,200, was the value of Retained Earnings on December 31, 20C?
Answer: $7,300

d) Assuming the December 31, 20C balance in the Retained Earnings account was $22,200, how much net income was earned during 20C?
Answer: $40,200

e) What was the monthly rent expense for the business during 20C?
Answer: $100


I thought I had a good understanding of the material but now I'm just totally f*cked up.

I don't understand a single question from the Assignment! How did they get the capital amount of $14,700 (question #1)?
For Question #2, what do they mean by balance?? Where does the $27,500 come from?
For Question #3, if I add Cash & Prepaid Insurance (the only two ASSET accounts), I get a total of $21,100. This should be the amount of Shareholders' Equity + Liability. But how can the common stock account be higher than the total and Retained Earnings still be positive? Same thing for Question #4.
For Question #5, if Rent Expense is at $2,400 for the year, then how can the monthly rent be $100???

I have no idea what is going on anymore!
Some (ANY) help would be immensely appreciated.

I feel like the questions don't even match up the information that's given and I'm totally panicking!!

help_questions
Jul 26th, 2008, 01:52 PM
not sure what the 20B and 20C mean......I dont want to start suggesting answers/explanation unless sure I know what the questions is asking.
I'd be glad to TRY and answer your questions, as it will be good practice for my intro to financial accounting exam on thursday......

kinda busy right now, but i'll check back later.
one thing you could do is clean up the trial balance...
use [TAB] to organize your numbers in this post, and it will be more clear to understand what is going on.....

btw, what school is this for?

Keetla
Jul 26th, 2008, 01:57 PM
not sure what the 20B and 20C mean......I dont want to start suggesting answers/explanation unless sure I know what the questions is asking.
I'd be glad to TRY and answer your questions, as it will be good practice for my intro to financial accounting exam on thursday......

kinda busy right now, but i'll check back later.
one thing you could do is clean up the trial balance...
use [TAB] to organize your numbers in this post, and it will be more clear to understand what is going on.....

btw, what school is this for?

This is the CSI / ICB Financial Accounting course.
Tab'ing doesn't seem to work in the forum and I also tried to indent through lots of spaces but it won't recognize more than one space at a time. :(


I actually included all the information that was provided on the WebCT system..
Unless somebody can make some sense out of it, I think that perhaps the system got their links wrong for the Case Study information??

adehbone
Jul 26th, 2008, 02:05 PM
Agreed, "December 31, 20XX", and then 20B and 20C are confusing. You sure its 20XX?

Keetla
Jul 26th, 2008, 02:06 PM
Agreed, "December 31, 20XX", and then 20B and 20C are confusing. You sure its 20XX?

I copy and pasted the entire thing! >:(

sxz
Jul 26th, 2008, 02:12 PM
You sure you're not missing any other relevant info? It seems there's a discrepancy between the first part and the questions.

Keetla
Jul 26th, 2008, 02:15 PM
You sure you're not missing any other relevant info? It seems there's a discrepancy between the first part and the questions.


Yes, 100% sure.

Now that I've already had a moment to breathe and get over my panicked state (;)), I'm becoming more convinced that CSI/ICB messed up their links for the Case Study information on WebCT.

It's very reassuring to realize that other people can't make sense of the questions either and that it's not just me...

Keetla
Jul 26th, 2008, 02:35 PM
OMG everyone!

I just completed some more assignments on the WebCT system and got another question which showed me the same "Case Study" information as the one above. And this time the questions made absolute sense.

So it was definitely a question of the wrong URL links.

Thank you for your time and help everyone!