The trial balance
Where each account stands at the end of a period: the two equalities that validate it, how to read it class by class, and what it does not tell you.
The trial balance is the summary of every account at the end of a period: for each one, what moved and the balance that results.
It is the hinge of accounting. The journal tells the story in time order; the trial balance summarises it account by account; the income statement and the statement of net assets are then only two extracts of that same balance.
Open it
- Open Finance, then Reports, Accounting section, Trial balance tab.
- Choose the period at the top of the page.
- The two control equalities appear at the head.
The two equalities that validate it
A correct trial balance checks two equalities, not one. That is what many church spreadsheets miss.
| Equality | What it proves |
|---|---|
| Total debits = total credits | No entry was recorded crookedly |
| Total debit balances = total credit balances | No balance was computed crookedly |
Both are verified on the server, not in your browser, and the verdict is spelled out: Balanced or Out of balance. If either fails, the screen says so instead of letting it through.
Warning: an out-of-balance trial balance is never a display detail. It means an entry is broken upstream. Print nothing, present nothing: open the Journal tab first and look at the "Unbalanced" counter.
Reading a trial balance without being an accountant
The columns read left to right like a sentence: where we started, what happened, where we end up.
- Opening: the account balance at the start of the period.
- Movements (debit and credit): what moved during the period.
- Balance: the result, in the debit or the credit column.
The column a balance falls into is not decorative: it states the direction of the account.
| Account type | Normal balance | A balance on the other side means |
|---|---|---|
| Cash and bank (class 5) | Debit | You spent more than you had: negative cash, to be fixed |
| Expenses (class 6) | Debit | A refund or a reversal exceeds the expense |
| Income (class 7) | Credit | Cancellations exceed the period's income |
| Loans (class 1) | Credit | The debt is repaid beyond the capital borrowed |
Tip: scan the trial balance looking only at balances "on the wrong side". It is the highest-yield check there is: three minutes, and it catches most category mistakes.
What the trial balance does not tell you
It gives balances, not explanations. A "Maintenance" account at 4,200 tells you neither how many transactions compose it, nor whether one of them is an outlier.
For that you need the general ledger: pick the account that puzzles you, and you get each of its movements with its running balance.
This is the basic accounting move: the trial balance spots, the general ledger explains.
Common mistakes
- Comparing two trial balances over different periods. Movements are not comparable if the periods are not the same length. Compare two income statements instead, which carry a "previous year" column made for that.
- Believing a balanced trial balance means correct accounting. It only proves the entries are well formed. A tithe entirely filed as an offering produces a perfectly balanced and perfectly false trial balance. The consistency check is what catches that kind of thing.
- Looking for the year's result in the trial balance. It is not there as a line: it is the difference between the class 7 total and the class 6 total. The income statement does that calculation and presents it.
Printing it
The Print button produces the trial balance on your church letterhead, with the period, the issue date and the name of the person who produced it on every page.
The Balanced or Out of balance mention prints at the bottom, even when all is well. A check you have to go looking for is not read, and a document that hides its reservations commits no one.
Note: amounts are right-aligned and a zero prints as an empty cell. That is the accounting convention: it lets you verify a column by eye, which is the first thing an accountant does.