Trial balance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Accounting

Financial accounting Management accounting Tax accounting
Major types of accounting Auditing Cost Forensic Financial Fund Governmental Management Social Tax
Key concepts Accounting period Accrual Constant purchasing power Economic entity Fair value Going concern Historical cost Matching principle Materiality Revenue recognition Unit of account
Selected accounts Assets Cash Cost of goods sold Depreciation / Amortization Equity Expenses Goodwill Liabilities Profit Revenue
Accounting standards Generally-accepted principles Generally-accepted auditing standards Convergence International Financial Reporting Standards International Standards on Auditing Management Accounting Principles
Financial statements Annual report Balance sheet Cash-flow Income Management discussion Notes to the financial statements
Bookkeeping Bank reconciliation Debits and credits Double-entry system FIFO and LIFO Journal Ledger / General ledger T accounts Trial balance
Auditing Financial Internal Firms Report
People and organizations Accountants Accounting organizations Luca Pacioli (1445–1517)
Development History Research Positive accounting Sarbanes–Oxley Act
Business portal
v t e

A trial balance is a list of all the General ledger accounts (both revenue and capital) contained in the ledger of a business. This list will contain the name of the nominal ledger account and the value of that nominal ledger account. The value of the nominal ledger will hold either a debit balance value or a credit balance value. The debit balance values will be listed in the debit column of the trial balance and the credit value balance will be listed in the credit column. The profit and loss statement and balance sheet and other financial reports can then be produced using the ledger accounts listed on the trial balance.

The name comes from the purpose of a trial balance which is to prove that the value of all the debit value balances equal the total of all the credit value balances. Trialing, by listing every nominal ledger balance, ensures accurate reporting of the nominal ledgers for use in financial reporting of a business's performance. If the total of the debit column does not equal the total value of the credit column then this would show that there is an error in the nominal ledger accounts. This error must be found before a profit and loss statement and balance sheet can be produced.

The trial balance is usually prepared by a bookkeeper or accountant who has used daybooks to record financial transactions and then post them to the nominal ledgers and personal ledger accounts. The trial balance is a part of the double-entry bookkeeping system and uses the classic 'T' account format for presenting values.

Trial balance limitations

A trial balance only checks the sum of debits against the sum of credits. That is why it does not guarantee that there are no errors. The following are the main classes of errors that are not detected by the trial balance.

An error of original entry is when both sides of a transaction include the wrong amount.^[1] For example, if a purchase invoice for £21 is entered as £12, this will result in an incorrect debit entry (to purchases), and an incorrect credit entry (to the relevant creditor account), both for £9 less, so the total of both columns will be £9 less, and will thus balance.
An error of omission is when a transaction is completely omitted from the accounting records.^[1] As the debits and credits for the transaction would balance, omitting it would still leave the totals balanced. A variation of this error is omitting one of the ledger account totals from the trial balance.^[2]
An error of reversal is when entries are made to the correct amount, but with debits instead of credits, and vice versa.^[1] For example, if a cash sale for £100 is debited to the Sales account, and credited to the Cash account. Such an error will not affect the totals.
An error of commission is when the entries are made at the correct amount, and the appropriate side (debit or credit), but one or more entries are made to the wrong account of the correct type.^[1] For example, if fuel costs are incorrectly debited to the postage account (both expense accounts). This will not affect the totals.
An error of principle is when the entries are made to the correct amount, and the appropriate side (debit or credit), as with an error of commission, but the wrong type of account is used.^[1] For example, if fuel costs (an expense account), are debited to stock (an asset account). This will not affect the totals.
Compensating errors are multiple unrelated errors that would individually lead to an imbalance, but together cancel each other out.^[1]
A Transposition Error is an error caused by switching the position of two adjacent digits. Since the resulting error is always divisible by 9, accountants use this fact to locate the misentered number. For example, a total is off by 72, dividing it by 9 gives 8 which indicates that one of the switched digits is either more, or less, by 8 than the other digit. Hence the error was caused by switching the digits 8 and 0 or 1 and 9. This will also not affect the totals.

References

Library resources about Trial balance
Resources in your library

↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 AAT Foundation - Course Companion - Units 1 - 4 (Fourth Edition ed.). BPP Professional Education. April 2004. p. 411. ISBN 0-7517-1583-2.
↑ Mukherjee, Mukherjee (2003). Financial Accounting. Boston: McGraw Hill Higher Education. p. 17.2. ISBN 978-0-07-058155-5.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.