[acct1st_yr]

Was just wondering if you can credit the interest receivable account in the adjustments, and what accounts are affected. Also, If you debit arts supplies account does it credit Art Supplies expense account? Am so confused, I thought these would be cash transactions, and therefore not recorded in adjustments. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[morgaine300]

Are you doing adjusting entries? Why are you thinking these are cash transactions? You aren't giving us a "transaction" - you're only asking what accounts you can debit & credit.

Theoretically, you can debit and/or credit ANY account if you have a good reason to do so.

Going on the assumption that you are doing adjusting entries, no, there's no cash. There's never cash in an adjusting entry. An adjusting entry serves the purpose of make adjustments to accounts due to accruals and deferrals. These are when the recognition (recording of) revenue or expense is in a different time than the payment. So by definition of accruals and deferrals, there's no cash.

There's not much logic behind debiting supplies and crediting supplies expense. Supplies is an asset. Expenses are expenses. Both are debit accounts. By crediting the expense, you'd be subtracting from it. Why would you want to subtract from an expense? If you debit supplies, it's because it's going up, which is what you'd do when you purchase them, not when you do the adjusting entry. The adjusting entry is for the portion that you've used, so that it's coming out of supplies and going into the expense, backwards from what you're trying to do.

And while you can credit interest receivable, if you're doing adjusting entries, not likely. If a receivable is involved, you're talking about interest that is earned but has not been received from the other party yet. So you debit the receivable (asset) and credit the interest revenue. When you receive the interest later, then you can debit cash and credit interest receivable, but that isn't an adjusting entry.

If you are still confused over the debit/credit rules, I'd suggest a good thorough review of it. (You can ask questions here but try to make them more complete questions - this one's a bit on the sparse side. And we won't do any homework for you, but you can submit your attempts, or just ask some general questions or for some examples.)

Entries are entries, so the rules will still apply regardless of what kind of entry you're doing. The different types of entries are only to do with the timing of them and the purpose behind them, but the rules remain the same. If you don't have those rules down, things will just get more difficult because that's a building block for everything else you'll be doing.