Subsidiary Ledger: Meaning, Types, Importance

Like other subsidiary ledgers, the accounts receivable subsidiary ledger merely provides details of the control account in the general ledger. Other subsidiary ledgers include the accounts payable subsidiary ledger, inventory subsidiary ledger, and property, plant, and equipment subsidiary ledger. A subsidiary ledger is a group of similar accounts whose combined balances equal the balance in a specific general ledger account. The general ledger account that summarizes a subsidiary ledger’s account balances is called a control account or master account. For example, an accounts receivable subsidiary ledger (customers’ subsidiary ledger) includes a separate account for each customer who makes credit purchases. The combined balance of every account in this subsidiary ledger equals the balance of accounts receivable in the general ledger.

You are not required to keep a subsidiary ledger, but doing so streamlines the task of accounting for your individual vendor transactions. The subsidiary ledger in business accounting is a list of detailed accounts that serve as backup for the general ledger. The general ledger is the main list of accounts a business owns that lists all the transactions connected to each account. The ledger in financial bookkeeping refers to the organization of financial accounts. Subsidiary ledgers maintain and backup financial data for accounts receivable and controlling accounts.

Focusing on the customer accounts, this makes sense for a subsidiary ledger chart because a general ledger would become increasingly dense if every customer and individual account was included in the general ledger. At the same time, the financial statements would become increasingly dense as a consequence. Therefore, make a subsidiary ledger up of the individual accounts so that each specific account can be dealt with on a singular basis. Furthermore, a subsidiary journal entry is no different than an entry in the general ledger. The only stipulation is that the entry has to agree with a corresponding entry in the general journal.

Since bookkeeping using ledgers is older than the United States, it was an ingenious way to double-check without having to actually do everything twice. Today, computerized accounting information systems use the same method to store and total amounts, but it takes a lot less time. Then prepare a schedule of accounts receivable and a schedule of accounts payable. The accounts receivable subsidiary ledger shows all the sales made on credit by a business. It provides details on these sales by showing invoice dates and numbers, credit memorandums, payments made against the credit sales, discounts, and returns and allowances.

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The general ledger accounts where detailed data of subsidiary ledgers are recorded briefly are called control accounts. Subsidiary ledgers track transactions within adp prepaid mastercard for parking and transit their control accounts in greater detail. Control accounts, sometimes called adjustment or controlling accounts, are summary accounts within the general ledger.

Instead, they allow companies to monitor individual components of the control account. That $5,000 might have included several checks from several different customers. The subsidiary ledger would have an individual account for each customer to keep track of how much each individual customer paid and what they were paying for.

A subsidiary ledger is useful to accountants and bookkeepers for a variety of reasons. First, it groups related accounts into one ledger that can be easily totaled and analyzed. This record groups all of the vendors and trade debtors’ accounts together in one place rather than having them spread throughout the accounting system. This way all vendor balances are located in one spot and can be analyzed individually or as a group. With an accounts payable subsidiary ledger system, you can access your vendors by account number, name or address. The information in the vendor account is updated each time you enter a new invoice or post a payment.

What Does Subsidiary Ledger Mean?

Part of the period-end closing process is to post the information in a subsidiary ledger to the general ledger. Posting is usually a manual processing step, so you need to verify that all subsidiary ledgers have been appropriately completed and closed before posting their summarized totals to the general ledger. Otherwise, some late transactions may not be posted into the general ledger until the next reporting period. The general ledger is the main accounting ledger containing a record of all transactions. As the business expands the general ledger is divided into subsidiary ledgers to allow for the larger volume of transactions and to allow access to the ledgers by the increased number of staff.

• Since companies are integrating accounting records with their other information into one database, I assume there will be less use of the term subsidiary ledgers in the future.
• Rather than having multiple related accounts clogging up the main ledger system, a single subsidiary ledger can sum and report the totals of all related accounts with a single entry.
• As an example, let’s say The Ford Motor Company has a general ledger balance that shows a total accounts payable balance of $106 million.

The balance in your accounts receivable would be the total of each of the individual accounts, which would be $60. The same concept is typically used for each supplier under the accounts payable account. Once information has been recorded in a subsidiary ledger, it is periodically summarized and posted to a control account in the general ledger, which in turn is used to construct the financial statements of a company. Most accounts in the general ledger are not control accounts; instead, individual transactions are recorded directly into them. Subsidiary ledgers are used when there is a large amount of transaction information that would clutter up the general ledger.

Limit employees’ access to add entries to the journal

To illustrate, management needs to know not only the total of its accounts receivable but also the amount that each individual customer owes. Rather than having multiple related accounts clogging up the main ledger system, a single subsidiary ledger can sum and report the totals of all related accounts with a single entry. As an example, let’s say The Ford Motor Company has a general ledger balance that shows a total accounts payable balance of $106 million. However, management wants to see which suppliers are owed and the amounts owed. Subledger is also known for being the subset of the general ledger in the accounting world.

An accounts payable (AP) is essentially an extension of credit from a supplier that gives a business (the buyer in the transaction) time to pay for the supplies. The subsidiary ledger records all of the accounts payables that a company owes. Each of these customers would have an individual account in the subsidiary ledger so you can track their increases in amount owed and payments made under the controlling accounts receivable account.

Vendor Account Information

As for example, detailed data of accounts receivable subsidiary ledger are transferred to accounts receivable briefly in general ledger. In subsidiary ledgers, individual ledger accounts are maintained in alphabetical order. Detail data of subsidiary ledger are accounted for in the general ledger in brief.

A subsidiary ledger contains the details to support a general ledger control account. For instance, the subsidiary ledger for accounts receivable contains the information for each of the company’s credit sales to customers, each customer’s remittance, return of merchandise, discounts, and so on. With these details in the subsidiary ledger, the Accounts Receivable account in the general ledger can report summary amounts for the accounts receivable activity. An accounts receivable subsidiary ledger is an accounting ledger that shows the transaction and payment history of each customer to whom the business extends credit. The balance in each customer account is periodically reconciled with the accounts receivable balance in the general ledger to ensure accuracy. The subsidiary ledger is also commonly referred to as the subledger or subaccount.

Subsidiary ledgers are groups of similar accounts that are put together under a controlling account, which keeps track of the total of all of the subordinate accounts it controls. Examples of controlling accounts include accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, equipment, and work in progress. Businesses can keep track of costs for individual jobs through a system of job order costing while also monitoring total costs of work in progress for all current tasks. The accounts payable subsidiary ledger is similar to other subsidiary ledgers in that it merely provides details of the control account in the general ledger. Other subsidiary account ledgers include the accounts receivable subsidiary ledger, the inventory subsidiary ledger, and the equipment subsidiary ledger.

Researching with Subsidiary Ledgers

It should be noted that although accounts receivable and accounts payable are real accounts they are also personal accounts and therefore held in the personal ledger. To maintain control, postings to subsidiary accounts should be made on a daily basis. By contrast, postings to general ledger accounts need to be made only periodically.

• Fourth, dividing subsidiary accounts into related sub-ledgers, multiple people can perform bookkeeping procedures.
• One way many businesses get more sales is to allow customers to buy on credit.
• However, the accounts payable ledger only records the daily total of your accounts payable transactions.
• Each individual account in the subsidiary accounts receivable ledger should show the customer’s name, address, credit rating, and credit limit, along with any other vital payment information.
• The balance in the customer accounts is periodically reconciled with the accounts payable balance in the general ledger to ensure accuracy.

Companies create subsidiary ledgers whenever they need to monitor the individual components of a controlling general ledger account. But the accounts receivable subsidiary ledger provides quick access to each customer’s balance and account activity. An accounts payable subsidiary ledger is an accounting ledger that shows the transaction history and amounts owed to each supplier and vendor.

A subsidiary ledger is a group of similar accounts that are put together under a controlling account like the general ledger. A general ledger can serve as a controlling account because it lists all the accounts a business has and include a breakdown of every transaction with those accounts for a set time period. A controlling account will backup financial information like accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, or work in progress accounts. Accounts receivable shows the value of goods that are sold by a business on credit. One way many businesses get more sales is to allow customers to buy on credit.

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Meanwhile, the company accountants can do their day-to-day work in the general ledger without having to wade through the details of the subsidiary ledgers. The general ledger is not able to provide this much detail and so having an accounts receivable subsidiary ledger, or any other subsidiary ledger for that matter, is a real benefit to a company’s operations. It can greatly assist in making helpful adjustments to a company’s business model in providing the insight needed to achieve higher revenues and targeted business expansion.

All such information is provided solely for convenience purposes only and all users thereof should be guided accordingly. It provides the user with the ability to continuously update the balance after posting each transaction. My Accounting Course  is a world-class educational resource developed by experts to simplify accounting, finance, & investment analysis topics, so students and professionals can learn and propel their careers. Real accounts are balance sheet accounts and are therefore permanent accounts.