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Trial Balance and Account Enquiry

The trial balance lists every account's balance for a company on a date, and account enquiry lists one account's transactions behind that balance. Together they are how a finance team checks the books before closing a month and answers "what makes up this figure?". Both are tabs of Ledger & Finance, and both can be read by ERP: Reporting holders.

Where to find it

Admin Panel → Finance:

  • Ledger & Finance — the Trial balance and Account enquiry tabs

Architect Panel → ERP - Finance:

  • Ledger & Finance — the same console for architects

Running the trial balance

  1. Choose the Company, the Book and the As at date at the top of the console.
  2. Open Trial balance. Without a start date it shows each account's debit or credit balance at the as-at date.
  3. Set Movement from (optional) to add opening and period columns: the balance at the start, the period's debits and credits, and the closing balance.
  4. Use Find an account and Type to narrow the list. Figures in brackets are negative.
  5. Select an account to see its transactions on the Account enquiry tab.
  6. Export writes a CSV; Print prints the table.

The options

  • Consolidate the group: the trial balance of the company and every subsidiary under it, translated into the group currency with intercompany balances eliminated. Offered only for a company with subsidiaries. The article on consolidation in this section explains how.
  • Before the year-end close: leaves out the year-end closing journal, so the year's profit and loss balances show as they stood.
  • Add every book together: a comparison only. A company keeping two books repeats entries in each, so they count twice; never use it as the company's figures.

Account enquiry

  1. Open Account enquiry and search for the Account by code or name.
  2. Set From (blank means the start of the financial year) and To.
  3. Optionally narrow by Counterparty or Cost centre.
  4. Press Show transactions. Each line shows its date, journal, narrative, debit, credit and running balance, opening from the balance at the start.
  5. Open a journal from its number to see all its lines and where it came from. Export the list as CSV when you need it elsewhere.

What goes wrong

  • The trial balance does not balance: every journal posted through the ledger is proved balanced, so rows were written to the ledger datastores directly, or deleted from under it. Find them before closing; the close check fails until it balances.
  • "The 'movement from' date is after the 'as at' date": correct one of the dates.
  • Figures look doubled: Add every book together is ticked.

Worked example

Before closing September the controller sets As at to 30 September and Movement from to 1 September. Bank charges show a period debit of 1,240.00 against 310.00 in August. They select the account, which opens Account enquiry for September, and find a 930.00 line coded from the bank feed by a rule that matched a supplier payment. They reverse the journal with a corrected copy and the account returns to its usual level.

Recommendations

  • Read the trial balance with movement columns at every month end and compare with the month before.
  • Drill from the trial balance rather than searching accounts by hand.
  • Keep the book at the top deliberate: it decides which book every report reads.
  • Treat an unbalanced trial balance as urgent: it means something bypassed the ledger.