Trial Balance

What is a Trial Balance?

A Trial Balance, or TB for short, is a list of all the balances in all your business's accounts at any given time.

A TB will look something like this.

Accounts in this case doesn't just mean bank accounts. It means all the categories that you put bills, expenses, and income into. All these categories are accounts and they will all show separately on the TB.

Why is it called a Trial "Balance"?

Because of the way double entry bookkeeping works, the TB should always balance.

FreeAgent will handle all the double entry bookkeeping of the transactions you enter during the year, such as posting of bills, invoices, bank receipts and payments, and journals, so that your TB should always balance.

It also makes sure the opening balance entries balance.

Where can I find the TB?

To look at your business's TB, from the Accounting menu, choose Reports, then Trial Balance.

You can filter the TB by date using this drop-down menu at the top left. A TB is always shown as at a given date, because it shows the balances in those accounts as at that date. 

You can check the figures for the year so far, or look at the full year, which is useful if you want to see costs that will come in at a later date such as payrolls that have been run for the whole year.

 

If you want to see what makes up any of the figures on the TB, simply click on it to drill down...

...and look at the transactions that figure includes.

Do these figures include VAT?

If you're registered for VAT and are not using the VAT flat rate scheme, then all the figures on the top section of your TB, where your profit and loss account codes are, will be exclusive of VAT.

If you're using the flat rate scheme, your expenses will be inclusive of VAT, your sales net of standard VAT and the difference between the flat rate and standard rate from your sales will show in the Flat Rate Scheme Surplus account.

If you're not registered for VAT, all the costs on your profit and loss account will include VAT, you won't have charged VAT on your sales, and you won't see any VAT accounts in the TB.

Can I export my TB from FreeAgent?

If you need to, you can also export the TB as a .csv file. This might be useful if you need to create your own reports from the information you've put into FreeAgent. Choose from the following TB exports, which you can see here:

Summary CSV will give you just a list of the balances in each account.

Transactions CSV gives you a breakdown of these balances.

Nominal Codes CSV lists the codes only, but doesn't say what the amount in each code is.