What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 0452 Accounting papers and filtered to irrecoverable debts and allowances. You answer, you find out immediately whether you were right, and you get the reasoning for the correct option and for each distractor. Wrong answers go to a mistakes locker so you can come back to exactly those.
Practice is free. You need an account only so your progress and your mistakes are still there next time.
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What examiners see students get wrong here
These are the errors that cost marks on irrecoverable debts and allowances, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Charging the full allowance to the income statement instead of the movement.
- Calculating the allowance before writing off irrecoverable debts.
- Treating a decrease in the allowance as an expense.
- Showing trade receivables in the statement of financial position without deducting the allowance.
- Recording a recovered debt as a sale.
- Saying an allowance removes the debts from the customers' accounts.
- Confusing the allowance with the provision for depreciation. Both are credit balances deducted from an asset, but they cover different things.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Irrecoverable debts and allowances revision notes.