 In this discussion we will discuss the discussion question of discuss and describe subsidiary ledgers given examples. When talking about subsidiary ledgers we may first want to list out what those subsidiary ledgers are and describe what they are. The subsidiary ledgers really typically the most common subsidiary ledgers we would be looking at would be for accounts receivable and accounts payable. So those are the two examples that we probably want to look into and go towards when answering a question like this. Now the subsidiary ledger are typically going to give some type of detail to these types of accounts that is different and over and above the detail that we would find in the typical controlling account or the general ledger. So in other words the general ledger is going to be the controlling account that we will have for each type of account so every account has a general ledger account. If we look at a trial balance or a chart of accounts and we pick out each number on that trial balance we can see that the number on the trial balance for example in accounts receivable represents the fact that people owe us so much money. For example if we had $10,000 in the accounts receivable trial balance that would tell us how much people owe us. If we want more detail on that account we can go to the controlling account the general ledger account and we can see what happened how did we get to that $10,000 by looking into the past looking in time backwards in time and that information will be listed out by date that it happened. And that's going to give good information if we're talking about a cash account same thing if we had $100,000 in the cash account and we want more detail we can look at the general ledger it's controlling account and see the dates of the transactions that they happened and see more detail for those transactions however for something like the accounts receivable account we want something else we want more than just when the transactions happened if people owe us $10,000 we also need to know who owes us $10,000. So that would mean that we need some other type of account another subsidiary account we need something more than just the controlling account that would list transactions by date and that subsidiary account for accounts receivable then would list that same information in the general ledger however the first grouping will not be by date but by customer. So all that information that's in the controlling account will also be in the subsidiary ledger account but grouped in a different order. So in other words if we total up all of the customers that owe us money and we add all them up it should add up to the same balance in the controlling account which would add up all the activity by date and that should also match the trial balance and the financial statements. The same is going to be true for the accounts payable for the accounts payable account and we say that we owe someone else $10,000 meaning that's what the accounts payable represents a liability that we owe others money we call them vendors typically and if we owe vendors $10,000 that's great we might want to know more detail on that to find more detail we could look as we can with every account into the controlling account the general ledger account and that will give us the detail by date so it'll break out the $10,000 as to when it happened what were the transactions that resulted in us owing this $10,000 in order of date however that's not enough for us to really get all the information we want because what we really need to know is who we owe the $10,000 to so that we can eventually pay them at some point in the future and to do that we need something over and above the simple controlling account or the general controlling account we need a subsidiary account for the accounts payable account that then listing that same information that's in the controlling general ledger account but in a different order the primary order this time being by vendor by who we owe by who we purchase stuff from and therefore owe money to so the same would be true for the accounts payable subsidiary as the accounts receivable the same relationship would be there to the controlling account in that if we were to add up everything in the subsidiary account if we were to add up all the people we owe money to the total then would should equal what is in the controlling account in the general ledger account for accounts payable and that's accounts payable controlling account should obviously also match what's on the trial balance because it's going to be what we use to make the trial balance as well as the financial statements because we use the trial balance to make the financial statements.