The Trial Balance is a bookkeeping worksheet in which the balances of all ledgers are compiled into debit and credit account columns. It's prepared at the end of a reporting period as a preliminary step to financial statement preparation.
You can use the trial balance to verify the arithmetic accuracy of your organization's bookkeeping entries. A balanced trial balance does not guarantee that there are no errors, but it's a crucial step in ensuring that accounts are correctly balanced before generating financial statements.
Yes, you can customize the date range for the trial balance or you can also select commonly used dates for quick access.
By default, the trial balance will display values in your organization's base currency.
You can change the display currency of the trial balance to other currencies that have been set up in your organization. For more information about setting up other currencies, refer to Accounting.
At the bottom of the page, click on See All Rates.
You will be shown a list of all exchange rates used to convert foreign currency transactions back to the organization's base currency.
Other information include the date of the exchange rate, as well as the rate type.
Yes, you can download the report in Excel or PDF formats.
See below for an example of the downloaded file.
Yes, enable Print Report Notes in Reports → Trial Balance → Configuration Icon → Display Options to add and format notes below the report. These notes will be included in the exported report.
Yes, enable Print Exchange Rates in Reports → Trial Balance → Configuration Icon → Display Options to display them below the report. They will also appear in the exported report.
Yes, enable Print Rounded Values in Reports → Trial Balance → Configuration Icon → Display Options to round all values to whole numbers. This also applies to the exported report.
What-If runs a simulation of your Trial Balance using assumptions you set, without changing any recorded transactions.
Go to Reports → Trial Balance → Configuration Icon → What-If Options.
The simulation is preview only. Your actual account balances are never modified.
Financial Year: simulate custom financial year dates to view balances over an irregular reporting period.
Profitability Drivers: apply a percentage adjustment to revenue or expense variables to see how balances would respond.
Combined: apply a custom financial year and profitability drivers in the same simulation.
Each driver is built from three fields:
Scope: the level the adjustment applies to, either Account Type, Nature, or Account.
Target: the item being adjusted. Available targets depend on the scope selected. For Account Type, these are Direct Costs, Operating Expense, Operating Revenue, Other Expense, and Other Revenue.
Percentage: the adjustment applied to the target. Entering 20% multiplies the target by 1.20.
The Percentage field accepts values from -100 to 500:
Positive values increase the target. Entering 30% multiplies the target by 1.30.
Negative values decrease the target. Entering -25% multiplies the target by 0.75.
Entering -100% removes the target from the simulation entirely.
Values outside this range are rejected, and the simulation cannot be run until the entry is corrected.
Click + Add Driver to apply more than one adjustment in the same simulation.
Each scope and target combination can only be used once. Adding a second driver for the same combination returns a duplicate error, and the simulation cannot be run until one of the drivers is changed or removed.
When drivers overlap across different scopes, the more specific scope takes priority: Account overrides Nature, and Nature overrides Account Type.
The Effective Variables panel shows the final multiplier applied to each scope before you run the simulation. If a driver is invalid, the panel displays the error instead of the multiplier.
Here are some example cases where What-If is helpful:
Reporting to a parent company with a different year end: if your parent closes on March 31 while you close on December 31, simulate the March year end to produce group reporting figures without maintaining a second set of books.
Matching your year end to your business cycle: if your peak season straddles December, a calendar year cut leaves revenue in one period and the related costs or inventory in another. Simulate a year end that falls after your peak to see how the accounts close when a full cycle sits inside one period.
Preparing figures for a buyer, lender, or investor: when a party asks for results through a month other than your year end, simulate that period to produce the balances without re-cutting your books.
Testing a cost increase: if a supplier announces a price increase, set Direct Costs to the expected percentage and review the effect on your balances before agreeing to new terms.
Modeling a revenue shortfall: set Operating Revenue to a negative percentage to see how your balances would look if sales fell short of expectations.
Isolating a single account: set Scope to Account to model a change in one ledger account without affecting the rest of its account type.
Yes, you can export the simulated report in Excel format.
The exported file includes a note identifying the figures as the result of a What-If simulation and the report title has “(Illustration)”, so they are not mistaken for actual reported figures.
