A trial balance in AccountingSuite is a financial report that lists the balances of all the accounts in the General Ledger at a specific point in time. It is prepared by extracting the ending balances of each account from the general ledger and listing them in two columns: one for debit balances and one for credit balances. The total debits should equal the total credits if the trial balance is in balance.
Trial Balance modes in AccountingSuite #
In AccountingSuite, the Trial Balance is available in three pre‑installed modes: Trial Balance Unadjusted, Trial Balance Adjusted, and Trial Balance Details.
- Trial Balance Unadjusted shows account balances before period‑end adjustments, giving a raw view of postings from day‑to‑day operations. Adjustments are made by a Journal Entry with an Adjustment type.
- Trial Balance Adjusted includes both regular postings and adjusting entries, providing a final view ready for financial statement preparation.
- Trial Balance Details is an extended version that not only shows balances by account, but also allows drilling down by Extra dimensions for more granular analysis.
Extra dimensions in Trial Balance Details #
In the Trial Balance Details mode, G/L accounts have extra dimensions that provide an additional informational breakdown of balances. These dimensions can represent analytical attributes such as department, project, cost center, location, or other custom tracking axes configured in the system. When running Trial Balance Details, users can filter, group, or expand balances by these dimensions, making it easier to see how the same account is used across different parts of the business. This turns the trial balance into a flexible analytical tool, not just a statutory control report.
Typical use cases #
A common use case is management reporting, where finance needs to see the same expense or revenue account broken down by department or project. Trial Balance Details with extra dimensions lets the user quickly answer questions like “What is total travel expense by department this quarter?” without exporting to external tools. Another use case is audit and internal control: auditors can review balances not only by account but also by project or cost center, checking consistency of postings and spotting misclassifications in specific dimensions. A further use case is reconciliation and cleanup, where accountants filter a single account (for example, “Suspense” or “Clearing”) by dimension to identify which project or location still has open balances that need reclassification.
The Option Menu on the Trial Balance Report allows you to choose to have the Transactions and Adjustments columns appear on the report. By default, these columns do not appear. If the adjusted option is chosen, these columns will appear.
For the most commonly used Trial balance setups (customized sorting of filtering), you can save the settings and use them the next time you need them.
Advanced filters in Trial Balance #
Users can extend the basic filtering of the Trial Balance by using the advanced filter path: select Add filter – Open selection window – Advanced. Along this path, the report offers access to many additional analytical fields that are not visible in the standard filter list. For example, users can filter by account attributes (non‑taxable accounts; accounts that are subject to exchange rate differences), allowing very precise slices of the Trial Balance for audits, reconciliations, and management analysis.
