Q.Why are the Discount columns in a Cash Book never balanced or carried forward to the next period, unlike the Cash and Bank columns?

The Discount columns are memorandum records of amounts already posted elsewhere — they represent no asset the business is holding, so there is nothing to carry forward.

The Cash and Bank columns of a Cash Book represent genuine, continuing balances — cash-in-hand and money in the bank are real assets (or, for an overdraft, a real liability) that the business still holds at the end of the period and will continue to hold into the next one; this is exactly why they are balanced and their closing figure is carried down as the opening figure for the following period.

The Discount columns, by contrast, are purely a MEMORANDUM record — a convenient place to jot down, alongside each cash receipt/payment, how much discount was involved in settling that particular amount. Once the discount has been allowed or received, the event is fully over; there is no 'discount balance' left over that the business still holds going into the next period. Accordingly, each Discount column is simply totalled ONCE, and that total is posted, once, to the Discount Allowed Acc …

Students sometimes try to 'balance' the Discount column and carry forward a figure to the next month, exactly as they would for Cash or Bank — the Discount colum …