Offsetting is the process of matching money owing to you with money owed to you.
A transaction that cancels out the results of another transaction is known as offsetting.
For instance, when a contact is both a supplier and a customer, offsetting can occur. They will send you an invoice, and you may send them an invoice in this case. Rather than both of you paying the other’s invoice in full, it makes sense for only one of you to make a payment for the difference between the two invoices.
What Is the Importance of Offsetting?
Investors and businesses use offsetting transactions as risk control strategies because they can’t easily cancel the initial transaction. Investors can reduce the risks associated with trading by cancelling these transactions. It’s worth remembering that an institutional or individual investor can’t keep cancelling options and other financial items. If you can offset a transaction, it depends on the complexity of your investment.
This occurs in the derivatives markets when, for example, investors are unable to consider a supply of thousands of pounds of coffee from a futures contract.
How Does It Work?
In the options and futures markets, offsetting transactions are popular. Let’s say Marie sells a 30£ per share strike price option to buy 200 shares of Company ABC. The choice is only valid for a year. John can’t just forget the contract because he’s bound by it. As a result, he buys an exact opposite deal (buying a one-year contract to sell 200 shares of Company ABC at a strike price of 30£). This mitigates the risk he faces if he chooses the first alternative.
Offset account
It’s an account that subtracts the gross balance of another account to arrive at a net balance. A “fixed asset account” with a debit balance, for instance, may have a similar offset account, such as a “provision for depreciation account” with a credit balance that accumulates the annual payment for depreciation.
A Contra Account is another name for an offset account.
For Example
ABC’s capital account has a credit balance of 2,40,000£ and a withdrawal of $40,000£ for personal use (drawings). In this case, the capital account is offset by the drawings account.
- Credit Balance in the Capital Account
- Debit Balance in the Drawings Account