Alright. Let's learn the first method for dealing with the allowance for doubtful accounts, the percentage of sales method. So when we do the percentage of sales method, the first thing I want to note is that we're talking about credit sales here, right? Sometimes they like to trick you, and in a question, they'll say, you know, the company had 5,000,000 in cash sales and then 10,000,000 in credit sales. Well, we're only worried about those credit sales, right? When we talk about the allowance, this is only about money that's owed to us. The cash sales, well, we already received the cash, so it doesn't really matter in that case.
Okay? So the percentage of credit sales, we're going to find some percentage of credit sales and that percentage is our bad debt expense. Okay? So what we call this is an income statement approach to finding bad debt expense, okay? Because we're dealing with the income statement, we're starting with sales, right? We're taking our income statement account of revenue, and we're finding some percentage of it that's bad. Okay? So, usually, when you see an exam question, they're typically going to give you a percentage and they'll tell you what the total credit sales are.
Well, once you do the percentage of credit sales, so the total credit sales times the percentage; well, that is your bad debt expense. Okay? That number you just calculated will be your bad debt expense in this scenario. Alright? So we can use our base equation just like we talked about in our T accounts, to find our ending balance in the account. So we'll be given some beginning balance, we'll calculate the bad debt expense, they might not even talk about accounts written off. Sometimes they talk about it, sometimes they don't, and most of the time, they actually don't, but if they do, well that reduces the allowance and then finally, we're left with our ending balance, right?
So most questions will ask you to find the bad debt expense right there, okay? But some questions ask you to find the ending balance in the allowance, and you'll have to be able to use this formula to get to the ending balance, right. The percentage of sales method calculates the bad debt expense. Okay? So if they ask you for the ending balance, you would have to use this formula. So let's go ahead and do an example to see how this works.
Let's do this one right here. A company had credit sales totaling 1,500,000 this year. Notice they told us credit sales totaling 1,500,000. Now if they just give you one number, they don't say credit, cash, well that's the only number you have to work with, that would be the credit sales. And they tell us, look, the company has a policy estimating 2% of credit sales to be uncollectible. There you go. They gave us so much information already. Last but not least, they told us the beginning balance. The allowance for doubtful accounts has a current credit balance of 12,000. So that's the beginning balance in the allowance.
What is the journal entry to record this year's bad debt expense? So first, let's think about the bad debt expense. Well, the bad debt expense is just going to be that percentage of credit sales that we expect not to collect. Alright? So we're going to take our 1,500,000 times our 2 percent, right? There's 2% uncollectible. So 0.02. So what's that going to equal? Let me get my handy dandy calculator out times 0.02, 30,000. Okay? 30,000 is expected to be uncollectible out of that 1,500,000.
So we would make a journal entry like this:
Bad debt expense (BDE) for 30,000, and we would credit our allowance for doubtful accounts for 30,000. Right? That would be the journal entry to record this year's bad debt expense. Now if they asked us what is the ending balance, notice they're also asking us for the ending balance in the allowance for doubtful accounts. Well, we're just going to make a simple T account. We've got our allowance for doubtful accounts T account, and notice they told us the beginning balance. Right? They told us it has a current credit balance of 12,000.
So it started with 12,000. That's our beginning balance and then we add to it our bad debt expense. Right? We did this journal entry, and notice this journal entry credits the allowance for doubtful accounts. So we're going to put that credit into the allowance for doubtful accounts, 30,000, and it doesn't tell us anything about write-offs, right? It doesn't say it could have said, you know, $5,000 worth of accounts were written off this year. It doesn't say anything like that. So, we don't expect to have any write-offs, and that's what would lower the account. So, I'll put a 0 there actually, not an x. And that should get us to our ending balance. Right? That's everything that affected the account. So we would add our credits, subtract our debits, which are 0. So 12,000 plus 30,000 gets us to an ending balance in the allowance of 42,000. Cool?
Let's pause here and then you guys try the next one in the practice problem.