Thread now moved, my sincerest apologies.

GoldenOldy · 8 September at 10:33AM

Hi there

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6471650/crash-course-on-debtors-on-accounts-if-possible-please#latest

I wondered if someone might help me understand the following please?
if figures in brackets are minuses then why is the figure of 12k in the bottom 8k?
A company account reads as follows:-

Debtors (10,000) does that mean people owe you 10,000?
Cash. 2,000 ……Does this mean the companies money in the bank
(12,000) …… How does this work

purdyoaten2 · 8 September at 11:32AM

I think that you need to provide a bigger breakdown of the balance sheet.

Debtors are indeed those who owe the company money. Cash is indeed money in the bank accounts.

I don’t see ‘the bottom 8k’
You can’t have a minus figure for debtors.

Is it the case that the total current assets are £12k?

Not enough information.

Penguin_ · 8 September at 11:46AM

The only way I could see the above happening, i.e. a negative on a debtors balance is if the company paying the money had over paid or paid for something in advance.

uknick · 8 September at 11:54AM

If it's a limited company and the accounts have been submitted, give us the company registration number and we can look it up at Companies House.

uknick · 8 September at 12:00PM

Penguin_ said:

The only way I could see the above happening, i.e. a negative on a debtors balance is if the company paying the money had over paid or paid for something in advance.

Could be

a massive bad debt problem with customers (unlikely),
they've messed up their prepayments by over expensing them (I see this quite often),
VAT is being posted to the wrong part of the accounts (could be they're used to getting a refund each quarter so map it to debtors but this time they owe VAT and haven't changed the presentation in the balance sheet)

or just a mess up by the accountant/bookkeeper.