Q.Classify the following into personal, real and nominal accounts.

Outstanding salary A/c represents amounts owed to persons, so it is a representative personal account — option (b).

The three types of personal account (traditional approach)

• Natural personal account — a human being, e.g. Mahesh A/c.
• Artificial personal account — a legal entity, e.g. Balan & Co, a bank, a company.
• Representative personal account — an account that stands for (represents) a person or group of persons, typically outstanding/prepaid items, e.g. Outstanding salary, Prepaid rent, Outstanding rent.

Applying it …

A Bank account is an artificial (juristic) person's account, so the correct answer is option (a).

Under the traditional approach in the Tamil Nadu HSC Class-11 Accountancy syllabus, personal accounts are of three types:

• Natural persons — real human beings (e.g. Vinoth's account).
• Artificial persons — bodies created by law that have a separate legal existence, such as a bank, company, club, or co-operative society. …

The Trading and Profit and Loss account is a nominal account because it deals with expenses, losses, incomes and gains.

Under the traditional (British) approach, accounts are classified as:

• Personal accounts — relating to persons, firms and institutions (e.g. debtors, creditors).
• Real accounts — relating to assets and properties (e.g. cash, machinery).
• Nominal accounts — relating to expenses, losses, incomes and gains (e.g. rent, salary, commission received). …

A real account deals with assets and properties — option (a).

Traditional classification of accounts:

• Personal accounts — accounts of persons/firms/institutions (individual persons, debtors, creditors). Rule: Debit the receiver, credit the giver.
• Real accounts — accounts of assets and properties (cash, building, machinery, goods). Rule: Debit what comes in, credit what goes out. …