Foot (Accounting)

In accounting, to foot is to add up a column of numbers and arrive at its total. The total itself is called the footing. Bookkeepers foot journals, ledger accounts and schedules to find balances, and auditors re-foot client records to check that the totals presented to them are arithmetically correct.

Footing is usually paired with crossfooting. To crossfoot is to add totals across a row and confirm that the result agrees with the grand total. Footing checks the vertical additions; crossfooting checks that the columns agree with each other. Together they form one of the oldest controls in bookkeeping, dating back to hand-written ledgers, and they remain part of standard audit work today.

When you check a shopping receipt by adding the prices yourself and comparing your answer with the total at the bottom, you are footing it. If your total and the printed total differ, something is wrong: an item was charged twice, or the till made an error.

Accountants do the same with columns of figures in their records. Adding the column again, and checking that it agrees with the stated total, is a quick way of catching mistakes before they spread into reports and decisions.

In a T-account, each side is footed separately, and the smaller footing is subtracted from the larger to find the account balance. Traditionally the footings were written in small pencil figures beneath each column so they would not be mistaken for entries.

For example, if the Cash account shows debits of $5,000, $2,400 and $1,600 and credits of $3,200 and $900, the debit side foots to $9,000 and the credit side to $4,100. The account has a debit balance of $4,900. Every account in the general ledger is footed and balanced this way before the trial balance is prepared, where the debit and credit columns are themselves footed to prove that they are equal.

Multi-column special journals are footed column by column at the end of each month. The column totals are then crossfooted to confirm that total debits equal total credits, and only then posted to the ledger.

Auditors routinely foot and crossfoot the schedules and listings that clients provide, such as the aging of accounts receivable, a list of inventory items or a subsidiary ledger of customer balances. A listing of receivables may total $1.2 million, but the auditor recomputes the total and agrees it to the general ledger before selecting items to test. If the listing was understated by leaving out rows, or overstated by a broken formula, footing reveals it.

Audit working papers mark footed totals with a tick mark, often a small symbol beside the figure, and a legend explains what each mark means. Footing is a form of recalculation, one of the basic types of audit evidence, and it is a step in procedures such as a journal audit and the review of a client's bank reconciliation.

Accounting software adds columns automatically, so arithmetic errors in the ledger itself are rare. Footing still matters wherever data is moved, filtered or typed into spreadsheets, because totals can be overwritten with hard-coded numbers, ranges can omit inserted rows and exports can drop records. Analysts often build check totals into spreadsheets that foot the columns independently and flag differences. Auditors also use data-analysis tools to foot entire populations of transactions, such as all journal entries for a year, and compare them with ledger totals.

Footing only proves that addition is correct. It does not show whether each figure is valid, properly classified or recorded in the right period. A fictitious invoice adds up just as neatly as a real one. For that reason, footing is a starting point that gives confidence in totals before an auditor or reviewer moves on to tests of the underlying transactions, such as vouching to documents and confirming balances with third parties. It is a check on receivables listings, ledgers and reports alike, but never the only one.