Run and analyse the Trial Balance

Summary

How to run and analyse a Trial balance report in Sage Accounting Start

Description

The Profit and Loss report opens when you select Profit and Loss from the Reports page.

Resolution

When to run it

Businesses often run the Trial Balance report at set times in their business cycle or financial year. For example, monthly or quarterly.

You can run it any time you want to see or analyse all your category balances.

How to run it

From Reports, select Trial Balance.
Choose your report criteria.

Report criteria

As of date >

Choose "As of" in the Period field and input a date to view category balances up to that date. For example, if you started using Sage Accounting on 15 January 2018 and want to see balances as of 29 June 2020, select "As of" and enter 29/06/2020. This will display balances from 15 January 2018 to 29 June 2020 in a simple four-column format

For example, you started using Sage Accounting on 15 January 2018. Today is 29 June 2020 and you want to see your category balances. There is no specific period; you simply want to see where you stand as of today. To do this, you select As of in the Period field and then enter 29/06/2020 in the Date field, the balances on the report will be from 15 January 2018 through 29 June 2020.

Analysis options, focused on in and out balances >

To run an analysis report, select one of these options in the Period field:

"This Year" or "Last year": View balances from 1 January to 31 December for the current or previous calendar year
"This financial year" or "Last Financial year": See balances for the current or previous financial year, applicable if you've set a financial year end in Financial settings, Read our S et up financial year, accounting dates and VAT article for more information.
"This Month" or "Last Month": View balances for the current or previous month
"This quarter" or "Last quarter": See balances for the current quarter (three months) or the previous quarter
"Custom": Select this option to input your own date range in the From and To fields

Opening and closing balances >

You may also want to add these adjustment options to the criteria:

This period only or Show opening & closing balances. Select This period only to see only movement in the selected period without the opening and closing balances. To include them, select Show opening & closing balances.

When you enable 'Show opening & closing balances,' the report incorporates entries from earlier periods, including the previous financial year. These entries automatically populate the Opening Balance column for their respective categories
Additionally, if you choose to 'Summarise profit and loss values,' the Trial Balance report adds a summarised Profit and Loss line. This line consolidates Profit and Loss balances from all previous years onto one line, while listing the current year’s activity for each account below it

NOTE: The Summarise profit and loss values option is also available if you select As of in the Period field.

About summarised profit and loss values >

If you tick the Summarise profit and loss values box, the summarised balance includes all the previous year’s transactions posted to Profit and Loss categories plus any journal entries posted directly to the Profit and Loss account.

If you generate the report for a previous year, it details Profit and Loss accounts for each category, rather than summarising them on the Profit and Loss line for the reporting period shown in the middle column.

For instance, if your financial year concludes on December 31st, and you input three sales invoices throughout the year: one in the current month totalling £500, another in the preceding month for €200, and one in the prior financial year amounting to €100. (All invoices recorded under the Sales Income category.). You select This Month (in the Period field) and select Show opening & closing balances before running the Trial Balance report. If you:

Leave Summarise profit and loss values unticked, the report shows the Sales Income category balance of €500 for the current month and €300 in the Opening Balance column. The Closing Balance column shows €800
Tick Summarise profit and loss values, the report shows the Sales Income category balance of €500 for the current month, €200 in the Opening Balance column, and €700 in the Closing Balance column. A total of €100 shows on the Profit and Loss line. If you expand the line, you can see that the transaction lines show zero balances in the month column and €100 shows in the Opening Balance and Closing Balance columns

NOTE: If you posted a journal entry directly to Profit and Loss, you can split it out from the summarised (system-calculated) totals. Drilling down on the manual entry will open the Category Activity report and drilling down from the summarised totals will open the Profit and Loss report. When you consolidate them into a single amount, the drill-down feature becomes disabled.

Hide zero balance accounts >

The 'Hide zero balance accounts' option is enabled by default, which omits categories with zero balances from the report. If you disable this option, categories with activity in the period, resulting in a net balance of zero, will show. However, categories with no posting activity remain excluded.

NOTE: The Trial Balance report always hides categories that have never had any postings.

Drill down for analysis

In review, you can easily spot account balances that look wrong, where the balance may be too high or too low. This helps you to find problems and fix them before running other financial reports such as the Profit and Loss or Balance Sheet.

Select an underlined total to open the Nominal Activity report for the same period for the account. This report will show you more detail.

To return to the Profit and Loss report, close the Nominal Activity report or select Back in your browser.

Export

After running the report, you can export it in PDF or CSV format. The CSV format allows you to import the data to another program such as Microsoft Excel for further analysis.