Overview: Debits and Credits, the Accounting Cycle: Original Transactions

The purpose of this module is to help you learn about the first part of the full accounting cycle which is depicted in "The Full Accounting Cycle" diagram below. It focuses on identifying, analyzing, recording, and posting information regarding original economic transactions that the company has entered into. It also discusses the purpose of the pre-adjusted trial balance.

While teaching the accounting cycle, I will also introduce you to the terms "debits" and "credits" which are used in double-entry accounting, and if you don't learn them well, people will never believe that you even learned the basics of accounting.

To help you better learn your debits and credits as described in this topic I helped create the following three debits and credits training tools:

1) Accounting Balls iPhone game. This is a fun, freely downloadable iPhone game that hopefully makes learning your debits and credits fun. The basic version of Accounting Balls can be downloaded for free to a variety of Apple devices (i.e. Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod). The free version will help you master the debits and credits of the basic balance sheet equation. The full version of the app costs $1.99 and will help you learn all of the debit and credit rules for most all of the accounts taught in this course.

2) Debits and Credits Trainer Android App. This app is not so much a game as it is a mini-bookkeeping system that allows you to enter transactions indicating the debit and credit amounts and accounts and then produces an income statement, statement of retained earnings, and balance sheet. In addition, transactions can be entered as increases or decreases to your accounts and the app will indicate whether the account balance will be debited or credited. The free version will simply show your increases/decreases and debits/credits in proper journal entry form, but the full version, which costs $.99, will produce the indicated financial statements:

Debits and Credits Trainer

3) Debits and Credits Trainer - Excel Workbook. If you don't own an Android phone, or simply don't want to buy the app, you can freely access the debits and credits trainer application that I programmed in Excel which you can download for free as described below:

Simple Excel Bookkeeping, Accounting Debits and Credits Trainer

To Complete This Module

To complete this module, you will need to study all of the content pages and successfully complete the related topic and module quizzes. To successfully complete quizzes you need to achieve a score of at least 4 out of 5 for topical quizzes and achieve a score of at least 8 out of 10 for the module quiz. You may take and re-take quizzes as many times as necessary to master the material and get your passing score.

To track which content pages you have viewed and which quizzes you have successfully completed, click the "Modules" link on the course menu on the left. A green check mark will appear to the left of each “Study” page that you have viewed and by each “Quiz” that you have successfully completed in the module.

I anticipate that this module will take about 2 hours to complete.