Sales return or Allowances are recorded in separate Sales
return & Allowance account rather than being debited to Sales
account because of best practices of financial reporting
requirement.
The aim is to know “gross sale”, “Sales return &
allowances” separately, and then calculating “Net sales”.
If the same are debited to Sales account, one would not know
how much was Gross Sale.
The same also helps in estimating how much % of sales the customer
usually returns.
This helps in taking adequate measures to reduce ‘Sales
returns’.