What is a suspense account?

A suspense account is an account in the general ledger that is used to temporarily store any transactions for which there is some uncertainty about the account in which they should be recorded. Once the accounting staff investigates and clarifies the purpose of the transaction, it shifts the transaction out of the suspense account and into the correct account. An entry into a suspense account may be a debit or a credit.

It is useful to have a suspense account, rather than not recording transactions at all until there is sufficient information available to create an entry to the correct account. Otherwise, larger unreported transactions may not be recorded by the end of a reporting period, resulting in inaccurate financial results.

For example, a customer sends in a payment for $1,000 but does not specify which open invoices it intends to pay. Until the accounting staff can ascertain which invoices to charge, it temporarily parks the $1,000 in the suspense account. In this case, the initial entry to place the funds in the suspense account is:

	Debit	Credit
Cash	$1,000
Suspense account		$1,000

The accounting staff contacts the customer, identifies which invoices are to be paid with the $1,000, and shifts the funds out of the suspense account with this entry:

	Debit	Credit
Suspense account	$1,000
Accounts receivable		$1,000

As another example, a supplier delivers an invoice for $2,500 of services, which is payable in 30 days. The accounting staff is uncertain which department will be charged with the invoice, so the accounting staff records the following initial invoice, while the department managers argue over who is responsible for payment:

	Debit	Credit
Suspense account	$2,500
Accounts Payable		$2,500

The initial entry records the invoice in the accounts payable system in a timely manner, so that the company can pay it in 30 days.  The department managers eventually decide that the office supplies account of the sales department should be charged with the expense, so the accounting staff records the following entry:

	Debit	Credit
Supplies – Sales dept.	$2,500
Suspense account		$2,500

It is extremely important to continuously review the items in a suspense account, with the objective of shifting transactions into their appropriate accounts. Otherwise, the amounts in the suspense account can grow into quite substantial proportions, and be very difficult to deal with months later, especially if there is minimal documentation of why transactions were initially placed in the account.

Related Topics

How do I reconcile an account?
What is a reconciliation statement?
What is an account?
What is the normal balance for an account?