My year end is Dec 23 and I want to run a trial balance for Jan 24 but I have not finished the Dec 23 accounts so cannot run the year end routine yet. How do I get a trial balance for Jan 24 that does not have any P&L opening balances?
Hello @WSM
When the year end it run a journal is processed to move the P+L balances to a balance sheet code.
Until this is done the balances would remain on the P+L codes.
Thanks Steve
Is it possible to request a software upgrade for this? I’ve never used any software before where the TB picks up prior year P&L balances in the current year’s TB. It is usually 6-9 months before we have finalised accounts and I’ve got 20 companies requiring monthly accounts. The TB will need to be manually adjusted each month. We export our TB use lookups to prepare our accounts in a standard format. While you are preparing a month’s accounts you may make changes 10-20 times and each time a new TB is run that needs to be manually adjusted. It’s not a very pleasant thought. We are evaluating a couple of software solutions. Hopefully this is the only issue we come across but is going to be a time consuming one.
Thanks
Stuart
Hello @WSM
A trial balance is a cumulative balance of all of your codes up to a specified date.
If you miss codes off potentially it would not balance.
It is not possible I’m afraid.
Hi Steve
It is possible as other software solutions do it but they do it “behind the scenes” if you like.
There is no need to have a journal process as this is an accounting requirement each year end. There is never a time when you wouldn’t do this journal so you don’t actually ever need to ask your users to do it.
The other solutions I have used have this reporting happening automatically meaning all P&L items for prior years are summed and reported under reserves b/f. It should be quite straightforward to programme (so says the accountant). So for example In Xero I ask for a TB for 31.12.23. I get a cumulative report for BS codes and a report for P&L codes only for 01.01.23-31.12.23. If I run the report for 31.01.24 I get cumulative balances for BS codes and P&L codes for the financial year to 31.01.24 (i.e. 01.01.24-31.01.24). If I run a transaction history there is no journal moving the P&L balances at 01.01.24. This is done as a reporting function only.
I appreciate it is a completely differently way of reporting from how you currently do it but hopefully I’ve been able to explain why it is a better way of doing the same thing and the advantages that it brings in terms of reporting.
Many thanks
Stuart
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