Manual Accounting Portfolio
A fourteen-document portfolio covering the full accounting cycle, prepared manually for assessment in the Certificate IV in Accounting and Bookkeeping at South Metropolitan TAFE.
The portfolio uses a simulated business, South Metropolitan Business Solutions, and covers transactions for June 2026. Each document was prepared without accounting software to demonstrate how transactions are recorded, posted, reconciled and carried through to financial statements.
Accounting principles demonstrated
Matching principle
Accruals, prepayments, accrued expenses and income received in advance are used to recognise income and expenses in the period they relate to.
Triple-entry recording
Credit transactions are recorded in the specialised journal, the relevant customer or supplier subsidiary ledger, and the general ledger control account. The subsidiary and control balances are then reconciled.
Accounts receivable and payable ledgers
Individual debtor and creditor accounts support receivables monitoring, supplier reconciliation and payment scheduling, while the control accounts provide the general ledger totals.
Reversals and adjustments
Errors, returns, bad debts, reimbursements and other adjustments are corrected through journal entries, preserving the original records and maintaining an audit trail.
Portfolio documents
What the portfolio demonstrates
The portfolio shows how transactions move from source documents through specialised journals, subsidiary ledgers and the general ledger, before being used to prepare the trial balance and financial statements. It also demonstrates that a balanced trial balance confirms the arithmetic but does not, by itself, identify every classification, omission or duplication error.