If you are given a list of items and asked to prepared a balance sheet, do you first need to develop a financial journey that has dual entries? I have tried to do this but it is not making sense to me because the items that are given are provided on an 'as at' date, and something like a 'mortgage' of 28,000 is a liability but it is not going to 'dually' reduce cash of 28,000 at once I wouldn't think.

Items were provided randomly but I catogorized them into:

Assets: building, accum depreciation (subtracted this), pre-paid insurance, provision for doubtful debt (subtracted this), acc receivable, stock (inventory), cash at bank

Liabilties: accounts payable, wages payable, mortgage

Net sales, bank interest earned, wage expenses & telephone expenses I calculated to get profit which I then put into a draft balance sheet under equity. I used (net sales + bank interest) - (telephone + wage expenses).

I added assets, added liabilties and equity, but A does not = liabilties plus equity using the values given for each item above.

Should I develop financial journal (although date by date transactions aren't given)? Why can't I get this thing to balance? For example, is cash at bank also capital under equity? Am I being too simple with the values provided?

Thank you so much,

Peggy

If you have account balances you can prepare a balance sheet. I would do a trial balance to check that your Debits equals your Credits and a trial balance will make doing a balance sheet easier.