Even if you don’t know too much about accounting and bookkeeping, you probably know that everything in your accounting system needs to be in balance.

You probably also know that your accounting team has to complete certain things to “close the books” every month and every year. However, you also need to know from day to day that everything is in balance in your accounting system. The QuickBooks trial balance is how you do that.

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What Is a Trial Balance in QuickBooks Desktop? 

Whenever you enter income and expenses into QuickBooks desktop, the system will automatically assign them as debits or credits, based on the category they are entered in. You don’t need to do anything to make this happen besides entering the information in the right place.

The trial balance in QuickBooks allows you to run a report at any time and make sure that your credits and debits balance – which means that they cancel each other out when you subtract one from the other.

If there is any amount left when you run a trial balance report in QuickBooks, it’s a sign that there’s something wrong with your records.

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How to Run a Trial Balance in QuickBooks 

Fortunately, QuickBooks makes most of the processes and reports in their system simple and user-friendly, and creating a trial balance report in QuickBooks is no different. To create a trial balance in QuickBooks, you can follow these steps:

1. Open QuickBooks and sign into your account

2. Click “Reports” on the top menu

3. Choose Accountant & Taxes from the menu

4. Click “Trial Balance.”

5. If you need to customize your report, there is the option to do that, but in most cases, you can just continue to the report.

The most important numbers in the trial balance are the total debits and credits. If they match up, it means there are no errors in your accounting system, and you can proceed to the next steps to close the books for the month.

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Trial Balance Does Not Balance in QuickBooks

If your trial balance does not balance in QuickBooks, it means that there are transactions that have not been entered correctly.

Fortunately, if your trial balance in QuickBooks does not balance, there are some easy-to-use tools to help you find the problem. Here’s what you need to do:

·   Open the reports menu and run your balance sheet in Accrual Basis

·   Make sure that you select all dates from the Display option

·   Look for the date on the report when your trial balance went out of balance

·   Now look for all the transactions that happened on that day, verify that they are correct, or correct as necessary

·   Run your trial balance report again, and if it’s still out of balance, repeat the process, looking for each date that the report goes out of sync and then finding, verifying and correcting transactions

Sometimes, if your QuickBooks trial balance does not balance, you might get lucky, and there’s only one transaction causing the problem. However, there might also be several issues that you need to fix before it balances. So patience really is key!

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How to Enter Opening Trial Balance in QuickBooks

Unless you have a brand new business, you will always have an opening balance in your QuickBooks trial balance.

If your bank account and credit cards are connected to QuickBooks, these balances will automatically be current on your trial balance in QuickBooks. However, you might also need to enter some amounts manually. Here’s how you do that:

·   Make sure you have the opening balance amount

·   Open QuickBooks and then open Settings, and then Chart of Accounts

·   Click New to create a new account

·   Choose a name, account type and tax code

·   Enter the amount, and the “as of” date

·   Save and close

Once you’ve entered an opening balance in your new account, every transaction that is posted to that account will be debited or credited to that amount.

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How to Make Adjustments to Trial Balance in QuickBooks

Usually, adjustments are made to trial balances in QuickBooks by accountants and bookkeepers to correct minor mistakes or enter uncategorized transactions. If your trial balance doesn’t balance and you don’t know why you should always follow the method outlined above to find and fix the problem!

If you do need to make an adjustment to your QuickBooks trial balance, the process is as follows:

·   Select the company you are entering an adjustment for

·   Click New and choose Journal Entry

·   You will be asked if this is an adjusting entry – click yes

·   Follow the prompts to complete the adjustment

·   Save and close

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How to Print a Working Trial Balance in QuickBooks

Usually, you will need to print trial balance reports in QuickBooks to share them with people who don’t have access to your software, or for management meetings, etcetera.

To do this, open the Accounts menu and select Reports. Choose Trial Balance from the options, and choose Customize to set the accounts you want to print and the date range.

Save, and then select the print option. You may need to do a print setup if it’s the first time you are printing this report.

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Get Real-Time Data from QuickBooks to Custom Spreadsheet Reports

If you’d like to know what your QuickBooks trial balance is without having to run reports manually, you can use the LiveFlow platform to create a real-time link between QuickBooks data and your trial balance in Google Sheets.

LiveFlow is a valuable platform built for QuickBooks, which is designed to make it easy to create an integrated, real time connection between your QuickBooks data and customized reports and dashboards in Google Sheets. This means that you don’t have to give anyone access to QuickBooks simply to review reports – you can use pre-built templates or bring live data to any customized report you already have.  This way, you only share what departments need to see. The live connection between QuickBooks and Google Sheets means that your reports will always be up to date – without any manual exports, data formatting or hands-on effort.

Every time your QuickBooks system gets updated, the mapped fields in your spreadsheet will, too – without needing to run any reports.

If you’d like to know more about QuickBooks and how it can help you to keep a finger on the pulse the easier way, we’d love to talk. Contact our team with any questions or to request a live demo.