I am working on a trial balance and am not sure if the following accounts should be listed in the trial blanace and/or if they should be a debit or credit.

Allowance for bad debts
Gain on the sale of old fixtures
Short term investments
Treasury Stock
Dividends declared on common
Paid in capital in excess of par

All accounts must be in the trial balance. Remember that every entry you do must be equal, and the equation must always be in balance. If entries have been made to an account and it therefore has a balance in it, then you wouldn't equal if you just left them out. (Granted, if the account actually doesn't have a balance, then no it doesn't need included. But since this is homework, I imagine they are not including accounts that won't be used.)

Obviously, you have gotten as far as a corporation chapter if you're doing stuff like PIC and treasury stock. Which means some of this should be review, such as where allowance for bad debt goes. (Contra asset that offsets Accounts Receivable.) This makes me think you might need to go back and do some reviewing. You should easily be able to pop back to the chapter on bad debt and find that if you don't remember.

It also is more useful to know the definitions of the types of accounts rather than trying to memorize each individual account. It also makes it easier when you learn new accounts, if you understand their purpose.

Like investments - assets are things the company owns or has some kind of right or claim to. If you had an investment portfolio, wouldn't that belong to you? Likewise, this belongs to the company and is therefore an asset.

Think of gains like revenue and losses like expenses. (There's a technical difference, but for now that works fine.)

Three of these are new accounts for corporations, so you need to do some more studying up on the accounts for corporations. PIC, treasury stock and dividends are all equity accounts. It's better to understand what the accounts are and what they mean, and then be able to determine from that whether they should be debit or credit, rather than just learning their normal balances but never understanding them.

Additional paid in capital is an amount above the par that stock was issued for. In other words, it's part of the issue price of stock and essentially the same thing, except that in some states it can be required that the issuance be split down between the par (which goes into the stock account) and anything over par (which goes into the paid in capital account). It still represents what the stockholders have paid into the company for their stock, for their piece of ownership. It's equity, which is mostly what that chapter is about. Is equity a debit or credit? (It hasn't changed since the beginning.)

The portion of equity that contains earnings is Retained Earnings. (Again, an equity account.) Dividends come out of Retained Earnings. So the Cash/Stock Dividend account is a contra equity, negative to equity. (If you were doing sole proprietorships before, it's like your old Drawing account.)

Treasury stock is when the company buys back its own stock, meaning it's reducing the equity. Again, contra account.

Credit 7,840 Accounts Receivable

Credit 7,840