Overview

The Trial Balance Report, by default, displays balances for all accounts that have been used in an Actionstep system.

You would use this report to see the balance of your accounts in your general ledger at any given time and be able to compare them to the balances on another date.

NOTE

There is also an option to display zero-value accounts.

The balances will display as credit or debit values, dependent upon the type of account and the balance as of the designated date(s).

For instance: In the above image, Business Current is a bank account wherein a deposit is considered a debit and a withdrawal is considered a credit, therefore, a figure in the Debit column denotes a positive balance where a figure in the Credit column would denote a negative balance.

TIP

See T-account chart at the bottom of this page to reference account-type debits and credits.

Accessing the Trial Balance Report

The Trial Balance Report is located at Reports > Accounting Reports in the Financial category.

Report Configuration Options

There are only three settings you can use to configure this report before running it.

Trial Date	The trial date is an 'as at' date, meaning the account balances will display the balances on the selected date.
Comparison Trial Date	The comparison trial date displays two additional report columns with the same properties as the Trial Date. This is useful to compare account balances at two points in time.
Show zero value accounts	The 'Show zero value accounts' option ensures that all accounts in the system are displayed, even if they do not have transactions against them on the given date(s). This can help confirm which accounts did not have balances or have not been used.

Producing the Trial Balance Report

Firstly you will want to generate the report to see it displayed on the screen. Once you do that, you will be able to print or download a copy of it as an Excel or PDF file.

Generate report

(on-screen)

Below the configuration options is a Generate report button. This button will generate and display the report on the current screen. It will also display further output options.

Print

The Print button will launch your browsers print dialog. This will adhere to your browser and workstation settings to print the report.

EXCEL

The EXCEL button will download the report in xls format.

PDF

The PDF button will download the report in PDF format.

Understanding the Output of the Trial Balance Report

NOTE

Using the three output options will generate the same information in the selected format. This section of the guide will use images from the On Screen (HTML) output.

Output Options (On Screen Only) and Header Information

Trial Date	The name of the matter with the matter ID in parentheses.
Show Zero Value Accounts	The first date of the report period. Will generate as today's date.
Expand/contract display button	This button controls the on-screen display of the report. When the arrows face out and the button is clicked, the report will span the width of the window. When the arrows face in and the button is clicked, the report will display with space on both sides of the screen. Expanding the display can be useful for longer text values in some table rows to avoid them spilling over to the next line.
Show report settings/Hide report settings	When the report is generated, the configuration options are hidden from view. Selecting the Show report settings button displays the report settings. This allows the settings to be updated and, allows the report to be re-generated. Selecting the Hide report settings button hides the report settings, so only the report information displays on screen.
Reload	The reload button refreshes the report. This is useful to include any data that has changed since the report was generated.
Generated	The report is stamped with the date for reference.
Print	Launches dialog to print the report.
EXCEL	Downloads the report in xls format
Additional header information*	If a Comparison trial date is selected, the date will be displayed in the header.

Column Definitions

There are five columns that will appear in the report giving details of each line which correspnds to a different account in your system.

TIP

Clicking on an account (the number or name) will open the Account Entries report filtered to that particular general ledger account and showing transactions that fit within the date range of the trial date and the comparison date.

You can use this to see the transactions that would cause a difference between the figures in the 'Trial Balance Report'.

Account	The Account column displays the account number followed by the name of the account.
Trial Date Debit	Denotes the balance of the account for the given Trial Date. Depending on the type of account, a debit could be a positive or negative balance.
Trial Date Credit	Denotes the balance of the account for the given Trial Date. Depending on the type of account, a credit could be a positive or negative balance.
Comparison Date Debit	Denotes the balance of the account for the given Comparison Date. Depending on the type of account, a credit could be a positive or negative balance.
Comparison Date Credit	Denotes the balance of the account for the given Comparison date. Depending on the type of account, a credit could be a positive or negative balance.
Total row	Totals each report column.

T-accounts to help you understand debits and credits on different types of accounts in your General Ledger