Overview

A Trial Balance is a financial report that lists all the balances of a company's ledger accounts at a specific point in time. It includes both debit and credit balances and is used to check the accuracy of bookkeeping entries. The total of debit balances should equal the total of credit balances, confirming that the accounts are balanced. A Trial Balance is typically prepared at the end of an accounting period as part of the financial reporting process to ensure that the accounts are in order before financial statements are produced.

As BOS Professional is flexible, especially when it comes to editing entries, it is sometimes possible to post an unbalanced entry. 

These tutorials explain how to find these entries (referred to as trial errors) and fix them to ensure the Trial Balance is balanced.

Navigation: Main Menu > Accounting > Ledger

How to Check for Trial Balance Errors

1. View a Trial Balance by navigating to Main Menu > Accounting > Trial Balance.

2. Next to Financial Year select the Current Financial Year.

3. Click View (button).

4. At the top is a large block: Balance with a number.

   1. If this number is zero, your accounts are balanced, and no further action is needed.

   2. If this number is not zero, proceed to the next step: How to Find and Fix Trial Balance Errors (below).

How to Find and Fix Trial Balance Errors

1. Navigate to Main Menu > Accounting > Ledger. 

2. Next to Set select No Date.

3. Leave the default next to Filter as Transactions. 

4. Tick the box on the right: Trial Errors. 

5. Click View (button) to see a list of potential entries with trial errors.

6. Double-click every entry and complete it (fill in the missing information so that it has a debit and credit). 

   • Note: You can ignore entries with a zero balance. 

   • Note: If there are two entries, the one has the debit balance and the other has the credit balance and you cannot combine them, you can tick the block Override Trial Balance error on each entry. This action removes the entries from the list of Trial errors.

⚠️ If you override Trial Errors, keep a record of those overrides for audit purposes.