Ledger Control Reconciliation Detects Unmatched Balances

Steps:

• Clerk credits customer's sales ledger account, reducing individual debt balance.
• No cash book entry means no debit to sales ledger control account for payment.
• Control account balance stays higher than total individual ledger balances.
• Reconciliation compares control account to ledger totals, exposing discrepancy.

Why B is correct:

• Ledger control account reconciliation verifies the control balance against summed individual account balances; the unrecorded payment creates a mismatch per double-entry principles.

Why the others are wrong:

• A. Sales reconciliation statement focuses on sales transactions, unaffected by cash posting errors.
• C. Customer statement shows reduced balance as recorded, so no customer query arises.
• D. Trial balance checks overall debits and credits, which may still equal despite subsidiary-general ledger mismatch.

Final answer: B