Trial balance

The trial balance is the foundation report for every set of accounts. It lists every ledger account with the total of its debits, the total of its credits and the resulting balance. The total of debits must equal the total of credits — if they do not, your books do not balance and you have a problem to track down.

Run the report

1. Open Reporting → Financial → Trial balance.
2. Pick the as-at date.
3. Optionally filter by site or estate.
4. Optionally include or exclude archived accounts.
5. Click Run.

What the report shows

Each row is one ledger account:

• Account code.
• Account name.
• Account type (asset, liability, equity, income, expense).
• Total debits in the period.
• Total credits in the period.
• Balance.

Totals at the bottom must agree.

Drilling in

Click any row to see every entry that posted to that account in the period. Each entry links back to the source record (invoice, receipt, journal).

Common uses

• Month-end close. Run the trial balance, confirm it balances, identify any unusual variances.
• Year-end. The starting point for the year-end pack.
• Reconciling control accounts. Compare debtor and creditor control account balances against the underlying customer and supplier statements.
• Pre-audit. Auditors often start with the trial balance and ask for backup on individual lines.

Export

The trial balance exports to:

• PDF for board packs.
• Excel for analysis.
• CSV for upload to other systems.
• iXBRL (when filing through HMRC, in a future release).