Trial balance

The Trial Balance report lists the balance of every ledger account of a company on a date, as a debit or a credit, with totals by account group and for the whole company. Use it to review the accounts at the end of a month, to reconcile them, to check your opening balances and before you close a financial year.

To open it, select Finance > Trial Balance.

Run the report

1. If you have access to more than one company, choose the company. TrakIT remembers your choice for next time.
2. Choose the financial year. The report starts on the open year that includes today, or on the latest open year if none does.
3. Check the date in the box next to the year. It starts on the last day of the year, and must fall within it: a date outside the year is set back to the year’s last day.

The report updates as soon as you change one of them. All figures are in the company’s base currency, shown under the year.

What the report shows

Accounts are grouped by category, in this order: assets, liabilities, equity, revenue and expenses. Within a category, they are grouped by account group, in the order of the group codes, and listed by account code. Each account shows its code, its name and its balance under Debit or Credit.

• Every account that can be posted to is listed. Heading accounts, which only group sub-accounts, are not: their sub-accounts are listed instead.
• Inactive accounts are listed only if they still have a balance on the date, so no balance is ever left out.
• Accounts with no balance are grey, with a dash.
• Each group ends with a Sub-total of its debits and credits.
• TOTAL at the bottom adds up all the debits and all the credits.

If the two totals differ, a red line under them shows the Difference and says that the trial balance does not balance. Every journal entry balances when it is posted, so this points to a problem in the data: report it to your TrakIT administrator.

How the figures are worked out

An account’s balance is the sum of all its journal lines dated on or before the date, from the first entry in the books: not only the entries of the selected year. A debit balance is shown under Debit, a credit balance under Credit.

The year-end closing entry of a closed year is dated the year’s last day. It moves the year’s revenue and expenses to the retained earnings account. So:

• as of the last day of a closed year, revenue and expense accounts show no balance, and the year’s profit or loss is in retained earnings. To see the year’s revenue and expenses, use the Profit & loss report.
• in a later year, revenue and expense accounts show only the activity since the end of the last closed year. Revenue and expenses of an earlier year that is still open are still included.

Who can use this page

Your role needs Read in the Financial Reports section. The company list shows the companies you have access to.