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The Trial Balance lists every account in your chart with its opening balance, the movement during the period, and its closing balance — each split into debit and credit columns. It’s the accountant’s first check that the books are in order: total debits must equal total credits. If they don’t, something is out of balance and the other statements can’t be trusted until it’s fixed. You’ll find this at: /accounting/reports/trial-balance
📷 Screenshot: Trial Balance with the account tree, the debit/credit/difference totals strip, and the filter row — to be added.

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When to use it

  • At month- or year-end, to confirm the ledger balances before you produce the Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss.
  • To get a one-page view of where every account stands, grouped by the structure of your chart.
  • To spot accounts sitting on the wrong side (for example a bank account showing a credit balance) before they distort a statement.
  • As a launch pad: click any account to drill straight into its postings.

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How to run it

The Trial Balance is a cumulative report, so it uses two dates:
  1. From — the start of the window. Balances before this date are summarised into the Opening columns.
  2. As of — the closing date. The Period columns show movement between From and As of; the Closing columns show the resulting balance at As of.
Set the two dates directly, or pick a period preset (This Month, Last Month, This Quarter, Year to Date) from the dropdown to fill them in. The report re-runs automatically when you change a filter.

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Filters

  • Root — limit the report to one section of the chart: All, Asset, Liability, Equity, Income, or Expense.
  • Compare — attach a comparative block to each account: None, Prior period (the equivalent window immediately before), or Prior year (the same window one year earlier).
  • Hide zero — drop accounts whose opening, period, and closing figures are all zero, so only accounts with activity remain. Parent/group rows stay visible when any account beneath them survives the filter.
📷 Screenshot: The Root segmented control, Compare dropdown, and Hide-zero toggle — to be added.

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Reading the columns

The report is shown as a tree that mirrors your chart of accounts. Parent (group) rows roll up the totals of the accounts beneath them; the page totals are taken from the leaf accounts only, so nothing is double-counted. Each account’s balance lands in the debit or the credit column depending on which side it naturally sits.

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The totals strip

Above the tree, three figures summarise the whole report:
  • Total debit — sum of all closing debit balances (leaf accounts).
  • Total credit — sum of all closing credit balances (leaf accounts).
  • Difference — total debit minus total credit. This must be zero. A non-zero difference is highlighted in red and means the ledger is out of balance — usually an unbalanced or partially-posted entry somewhere in the window. Investigate before relying on any statement.
The report also flags an individual account as out of balance when it carries a balance on the opposite side to the one it’s configured to require (for example a control account set to “must be debit” that ends the period in credit).

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Drilling in

The Trial Balance is interactive:
  • Click an account name to open its Account Ledger — every posting behind that closing balance, for the report’s window.
  • Click an amount (opening / period / closing) to jump to the General Ledger filtered to that account, opening it pre-scoped to the right date window so you can see the lines that built the figure.

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Comparative view

With Compare set to Prior period or Prior year, each account also carries the comparative window’s opening, period, and closing figures, so you can read this period beside the last at a glance.

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Exporting

Use Export for CSV, Excel (.xlsx), or PDF. The export includes every account row with its code, name (indented to show depth), root type, whether it’s a group, and all six debit/credit columns, followed by the Totals and Difference rows. PDF and Excel are laid out in landscape to fit all ten columns.

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Tips and gotchas

  • Difference must be zero. If it isn’t, fix the unbalanced entry before producing other reports — the Balance Sheet’s “balanced” check and the Cash Flow reconciliation depend on it.
  • The Trial Balance reflects posted activity. Draft (unposted) journals are excluded by default.
  • For a closed or locked period, the figures come from the frozen snapshot taken at close and won’t change even if a later correcting entry is posted in a subsequent month.
  • A short cache means re-opening the same view within a minute returns instantly; change a date or filter to force a fresh computation.