Trial Balance

The Trial Balance is used to check the integrity of the General  Ledger, and the accuracy of the posting.  It provides a listing of  all the accounts, the beginning, and ending, balances, and the debit  and credit totals.

This report is run prior to performing a  closing, because it permits the evaluation of all transactions.  This is

considered a safety check for the accountant, and an audit  trail for later evaluation should problems arise.

The report may be run with, or without, the detail lines.  These are  the individual transactions for each account.  A summary report  might be run first, with a comprehensive detail report run should problems  occur.  However, we recommend the complete report be run, and saved,  for an audit trail.

The report details the status of each account's beginning balance.  This is actually the current (ending) balance of the account at the  last period closing.  It then displays (if requested), and totals  all debits and credits.  Finally, it provides a new ending balance.  The amount is displayed on the balance side of the debit/credit T  for that specific account.

When the ledger is out of balance, it is useful to check off all  corresponding entries, looking for the error. It will be generally  quite easy to find if the ledger is closed on a weekly basis.  Then  the number of transactions will be relatively limited compared to  doing it only once a month.  For many people, it is far easier to  find difficulties on paper than it is to use the automated computer  system for analyzing the ledger.

Many people run the trial balance each week, or more often, and then perform a period closing on the G/L.  This makes the number of transactions to validate far easier to control.