Should there be negative cash on the balance sheet?
/A business can report a negative cash balance on its balance sheet when there is a credit balance in its cash account. This happens when the business has issued checks for more funds than it has on hand. When a negative cash balance is present, it is customary to avoid showing it on the balance sheet by moving the amount of the overdrawn checks into a liability account and setting up the entry to automatically reverse; doing so shifts the cash withdrawal back into the cash account at the beginning of the next reporting period.
There are two options for which liability account to use to store the overdrawn amount, which are as follows:
Separate account. The more theoretically correct approach is to segregate the overdrawn amount in its own account, such as "Overdrawn Checks" or "Checks Paid Exceeding Cash." However, since this is likely to be a small account balance, it clutters the general ledger with an extra account.
Accounts payable account. Just drop the amount into the accounts payable account. If you do, then the accounts payable detail report will no longer exactly match the total account balance. However, as long as the entry automatically reverses, the overdrawn amount should not clutter up the account for long. This approach is especially appealing if overdrawn checks are a rarity. If you use this approach, you will need to list the overdrawn amount in the account reconciliation for the accounts payable account, to identify the nature of the disparity.
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Based on this discussion, it is reasonable to assume that any time you see a company's balance sheet with a zero cash balance, it brings up several issues. First, the company has overdrawn its checking account, which brings up questions about its liquidity, and therefore its ability to continue as a going concern. Second, the company is playing games with its suppliers, printing checks in order to "prove" that checks were created on time, and then holding onto them until there is sufficient cash to keep them from being rejected by the bank. And finally, the company is relying upon an overdraft arrangement with its bank to fund these additional payments, which means that it probably suffers from ongoing cash problems.