Trial Balance
The trial balance brings GL classifications together so that a reviewer can explain where each balance began, what the period added or reduced, and where it ended. Under this presentation's debit-positive and credit-negative convention, signed period movements carry the beginning balance to the ending balance. An asset and a payable can therefore display opposite signs while both are valid balances.
Open Accounting → Reports → Trial Balance to inspect that bridge in the configured financial-statement presentation. Arithmetic balance is a starting control; it does not establish that every source was recorded or classified correctly.
Choose the reporting scope
Select Entity and its matching Accounting Period, then confirm dates. A missing period can resolve to the latest entity period; an invalid entity/period combination can fall back to calendar-year dates. Do not rely on a selector label without checking the report context.
The screenshots use Cedarbridge Reporting Example LP, July–September 2026, with fictional USD accounting records. The period is Open. These examples explain report calculations; they do not demonstrate execution of payment, posting, fee/allocation runs, valuation approval or close.
Prepared USD balances: cash 5,340, investment cost 4,000, unrealized asset 500, prepaid 500 and payable credit 40. Subtotals repeat detail; net assets are 10,300.
Read the signed bridge
For a balance-sheet account, earlier eligible history supplies the beginning amount, and the current window's debit and credit effects explain the change. The income/expense opening reset and prior-P&L presentation adjustment mean this is not a uniform raw opening ledger for every row. Distinguish a detail classification from a subtotal or control before reconciling another report; those presentation rows can repeat or adjust the same underlying history.
Read Account Category, GL Number, Parent GL Account, Account Name, Beginning Balances, Debits, Credits and Ending Balances.
Debits display positive and credits negative. Asset, liability and equity openings include eligible earlier history. Income and expense openings are reset to zero for this presentation.
The report is not a completely raw GL export:
- Current-window closing journals are excluded; older closing journals remain eligible.
- Equity account code 70008 receives a configured prior-P&L presentation adjustment.
- Suspense/unapplied GL code 10010 is hidden from asset/liability detail but remains included in controls.
- Detail, control, total and spacer rows have different roles. Do not sum all visible rows together.
- Configured accounts without eligible journal lines need not appear.
These conventions can explain why a control is not simply the sum of the detail currently visible on screen.
Investigate and return
- Identify the account and whether you are reading a detail row or a presentation control.
- Open the actual journals in Accounting Operations → Journal Entries / Journal Explorer; compare dates, sides, source and complete lines.
- Reconcile the report's closing-entry and prior-P&L conventions before treating a difference from another ledger view as a posting error.
- Correct an independently wrong journal, source or account classification through the approved process.
- Refresh the same period and repeat GL and final statement controls.
The dataset includes non-Draft journals without a separate Reversed exclusion. It does not convert currencies or group the presentation by currency, despite USD formatting. A balanced presentation is not proof that all expected sources exist, that account classifications are right, or that mixed currencies are comparable.
The balanced Draft in the separate core example remains excluded from this report's journal population. Editing a status field is not a substitute for the authorized posting operation.
The example's cash ends at USD5,340, investment cost plus unrealized value at USD4,500, prepaid assets at USD500 and the payable at a credit-normal USD40. The net-assets subtotal is USD10,300; net income displays as a USD300 credit under the signed trial-balance convention.