 In this discussion, we will discuss the discussion question of describe a post closing trial balance. So we're going to be discussing what a post closing trial balance is. Now if we don't know what a post closing trial balance is, we can at least say, hey, it's a trial balance and we can start there. So what is a trial balance? The post closing trial balance will will include the characteristics of a typical trial balance, those being that we're going to have a list of accounts which have activity in them. The list of accounts will include be in order by first assets and then liabilities, then equity, then revenue or income and expenses. And then the trial balance is going to have the account balances as of a point in time. Typically we have one date on the trial balance which is a little tricky because really it has some accounts that are both temporary and some that are permanent. And then it'll list those accounts balances within the trial balance. And we know that the total debits will equal the total credits. It will list out the accounts in terms of their normal balances in terms of debits and credits. And then it will sum up the trial balance showing that total debits will equal total credits. All that would be true for the for the post closing trial balance as well. So again, if we didn't know the difference between the two, that's where we can start. Now, it's important to note when we talk about different types of trial balances that really the trial balances are pretty much the same. We're really talking about when the trial balance was generated. So you might hear, you know, someone's just talking about a trial balance within the textbook or just in general, here's a trial balance. You might hear the term unadjusted trial balance. We might hear the term adjusted trial balance. We might hear the term here as we see here, post closing trial balance. And again, they all have the characteristics of a trial balance. It's just really when we create them. And due to the time in which we generate these, these forms, we will have different characteristics that we can add on to those normal characteristics of the trial balance. Now first we know that the post closing trial balance, you might want to first say, well, when is that going to happen? It happens after the closing process. So you could say, well, the closing, the post closing trial balance is going to be a trial balance that is generated during or after, and this gets after the closing process has been completed. And so you could talk about the accounting cycle, just talk about when this will take place. We typically will have the normal accounting journal entries that happen, the bills, the invoices and whatnot. And then we're going to have the unadjusted trial balance that's created in order to help us with the adjusting process resulting in an adjusting trial balance. And then the adjusting trial balance is going to be used to create the financial statements. And then in the closing process, we will enter the closing entries to convert from an adjusted trial balance to the post closing trial balance. What are the characteristics of the post closing trial balance that makes it distinct when it's generated at that point in time? Well, if it happens after the closing process, we know what the closing process does. It's going to close out all the temporary accounts, all the income statement accounts and the draws accounts or dividends to the capital account. It resets those. It resets those timing accounts. And therefore, the post closing trial balance after that has been done will have no temporary accounts or the temporary accounts will all have zeros listed for them because there won't be any balances in them. So it's just going to look like a trial balance that's a lot smaller. You're going to say, hey, there's a trial balance with half as many accounts in it. And if you look closer, you'll say, hmm, this trial balance with just permanent accounts or balance sheet accounts, meaning we're still going to have the similarities you can start to list. You can compare the post closing trial balance to an adjusted trial balance or most trial balances. And if you were to compare the post closing to the adjusted trial balance, you would see the top portion being the same, meaning assets are going to be all the same. The liabilities will remain the same. Then the equity accounts will differ. The equity account in the post closing typically being larger than the equity account in the adjusted trial balance due to the closing process. And then everything under the equity account will be gone for the post closing trial balance. Whereas in the adjusted trial balance, we will, of course, then see revenue followed by expenses. Now note that both of them will still be in balance. The post closing trial balance will be in balance and the adjusted trial balance will be in balance. And they're all the same on the assets liability portion. That means that equity is the difference, meaning the equity in the post closing trial balance includes all equity accounts from the adjusting trial balance. It includes the adjusted trial balance. It includes the equity accounts as well as revenue and expenses now all being included in the equity section showing equity as of a point in time, which is why the debits and credits are equivalent in the adjusted trial balance as they are in the post closing trial balance because of that process. Now the post closing trial balances is represented once again just those permanent accounts. So it's really representing only the balance sheet accounts and after the closing process. So we see all those permanent accounts and no temporary accounts. And then you can go into kind of the reasoning for this if you had more time and you wanted to expand on that. And that would basically be that, you know, we needed to reset the zero balances on the income statement and the expenses in order to start the next time period after we close after we ended the prior time period and made the financial statements. The temporary accounts are those that are measuring performance over time. You will need to start at zero and count upwards for the new timeframe in order to measure performance for that new timeframe.