Sources and recording of data

What the specification requires

These are the requirements for this section, paraphrased from the official specification.

• Prepare and understand source documents: purchase and sales invoices, debit and credit notes, statements of account, petty cash vouchers, journal vouchers, cheque counterfoils, till rolls, cash receipts, paying-in slip counterfoils and bank statements.
• Record transactions in the purchases, sales and returns journals, general journal, cash book and petty cash book, then in ledger accounts, and transfer to the financial statements.
• Divide the ledger into receivables, payables and general ledgers; deal with trade and cash discounts, disposals, irrecoverable debts and contra entries.
• Understand the accounting equation and use the imprest system for petty cash.

How it is examined

This section is assessed in Paper 1, which lasts 1 hour 45 minutes and carries 75 marks, worth 50% of the qualification.

Sources: OxfordAQA International GCSE Accounting (9215) specification (FT Sept 2024) (Version 1.2), page 9. See all sources.

Slips our teachers see most in this section

These come from marking student work in lessons, not from the board.

• Not knowing which book of prime entry a till roll feeds.
• Treating the journal voucher as a ledger account.
• Mixing up contra entries between customers and suppliers.

If these slips look familiar, a teacher can go through your child's answers on sources and recording of data and fix the habit behind each one. Book a trial class.

A teacher's note

This is the entry section of the OxfordAQA course and sits in Paper 1. Our teachers pay attention to the specification's long list of source documents, including till rolls and journal vouchers, which students on other boards may not meet by name. A short matching exercise per document type fixes the vocabulary quickly.

Where this sits on the other boards

Our teachers' map of the same ideas in the other documents (an editorial mapping, with the official reference shown):

• Double entry and ledger accounts: Cambridge 2.1 (p. 12); Edexcel Topic 2, item 3 Ledger accounting (p. 15).
• Business documents: Cambridge 2.2 (p. 12); Edexcel Topic 2, item 1 Business documentation (p. 15).
• Books of prime entry: Cambridge 2.3 (p. 12); Edexcel Topic 2, item 2 Books of original entry (p. 15).

Keep going

• All OxfordAQA 9215 topics

Official reference: OxfordAQA International GCSE Accounting (9215) specification (FT Sept 2024) (Version 1.2), page 10. See all sources.