Generating a Trial Balance

A Trial Balance lists every account with a non-zero balance as of a specific date, with debit and credit columns that should sum to equal totals (proving INV-4 — debits equal credits at the journal entry level).

When you'd run one

Before lodging BAS, to spot accounts with unexpected balances.

At month-end and year-end as part of a close-of-period checklist.

For your accountant to review prior to a tax return.

To investigate a reconciliation discrepancy.

Steps

Go to Reports → Trial Balance (or use the Reports overview page and click the Trial Balance tile).

Set the As-of date. Defaults to today; common picks are the last day of the month or quarter.

Optional: tick Include zero-balance accounts if you want every chart-of-accounts row, even those with no activity. Useful for full audits; off by default.

Optional: filter by Account type to see only assets, only liabilities, etc.

Optional: enable Comparison date to show two columns side-by-side (e.g. this month-end vs last month-end).

The report renders inline with running totals at the bottom and an is_balanced indicator. If is_balanced is false, something has bypassed the normal posting service — flag this to your accountant immediately.

Exporting

Click Export CSV (top-right) to download. The CSV includes a UTF-8 BOM so Microsoft Excel on Windows opens it without character corruption.

Drill-through

Click any row to drill into the [Account Transactions report](/help/reports/understanding-pnl) for that account, pre-filtered to the period implied by the as-of date.

Common questions

Why does the balance differ from my bank statement? The Trial Balance is computed from the ledger (journal entries), not the bank feed. If the bank reconciliation is incomplete, the ledger balance will differ from the bank's actual balance. Reconcile first. An account is missing. If "Include zero-balance accounts" is off, accounts with no activity are hidden. Toggle it on to see them.