 Zero accounting software, trial balance report. Get ready to be an office hero with zero. Here we are in our custom zero homepage. We set up in a prior presentation, scrolling in a bit, holding down control, up on the scroll wheel, currently at 175% zoom in opening the demo, but doing so with the reset button, which will reset the data and open the demo. We're gonna be duplicating some tabs to put reports in as we do every time. Hide, right click the tab up top, duplicate, and then right click the duplicated tab to duplicate it again, back to the tab, to the middle as the tab to the right is thinking accounting drop down. We're gonna go to the balance sheet report and then tab to the right as we skip to the loo and we're gonna go to the accounting drop down this time and we want the income statement report. Profit lost P and L as that's thinking back to the middle tab, the balance sheet change in the date customization. And we want 2022 the end of it update. That's the setup process that we do every time balance sheet income statement open. Now we're looking at support accounting instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website, broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files, and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Some of the other reports, remembering that most other reports give more detail on expand in one or multiple line items of these two major financial statement reports. Let's go to the tab to the right, right click on it again and duplicate one more time so we can be opening up then our new report which will be the trial balance accounting drop down, reports. Now I typically open the trial balance by just typing in here trial balance and we've got the old one and so we're gonna just open the latest and the greatest of the trial balances here. This is a very useful report, the trial balance because it basically gives you the same information, all the accounts that are on the balance sheet and the income statement, but it does so in a more streamlined fashion which might be useful when we're trying to enter data into the system because remember when we're entering data we're gonna be doing so with these kind of forms that should be easy to do the data input because we have set up the underlying foundational things like the chart of account and the items. These forms then enter transactions, financial transactions that help construct the balance sheet, the income statement and related reports. So every time we enter a transaction here what we wanna do is double check that it has an impact as we would expect on the balance sheet and the income statement by possibly drilling down on the numbers on the balance sheet and the income statement to verify the transactions. But you'll note that the balance sheet and the income statement are have two reports you gotta go to to kind of sort this out to verify and they've got all these subtotals so they can be quite long in nature. The trial balance is just gonna be one nice streamlined report that has all of your accounts kind of in a chart of account types of nature which is basically by account type generally the balance sheet on top of the income statement. So let's first do some organization. This needs to be dated. Let's go to the date and let's say this is gonna be for 2022 and okay and then the columns selected. All the columns are selected. I don't wanna compare it to a prior period so I'm gonna say none on this one. And then this looks good. So let's go ahead and update it. So there we have it. So here's our standard kind of trial balance. So now we've got our debits and credits even if you're not familiar with debits and credits you can still use this report to kind of go to whenever you're verifying a data input form such as an invoice. If I entered an invoice I can go into here and find the accounts receivable and I can scroll down without having to go to another report and find the revenue account and see that those are indeed the two accounts that are impacted. You can see it's basically an order generally in terms of the balance sheet on top of the income statement, balance sheet accounts of assets such as bank accounts, current asset, fixed asset and then liabilities, the current liabilities and then the equity accounts and then we're on the income statement the sales accounts and then cost of goods sold and expense account and then all of the expense accounts. So as long as you can kind of see the delineation between the account categories, assets, liabilities equity, income and expense then you can navigate this report and use it to kind of verify as you enter transactions into the system a bit more efficiently. So then we've got the it's also nice if you're learning debits and credits or if you like to work with debits and credits because then of course you have the debits and credits which are more efficient in a lot of ways. What we don't have here are the subtotals what's been removed. We don't have the subtotals for current assets total assets and so on and so forth. And that's why it's gonna be a bit more streamlined and a shorter type of report. So we've got the codes on the left you can sort by code here we could sort by account if we would like although you know, that's not the main way you would see it sort by account type here now when you sort by account type you might think, hey look it's gonna sort by assets, liabilities, equity, income and expense, but it's not it's just putting it in alphabetical order. So that might be useful from time to time but it's not the main way that you would want to see it. So you're probably gonna wanna sort it by code but realize that as you're entering the code as you're creating new accounts you wanna make sure that you're doing so in such a way that it lines up to the structure of what a trial balance should be basically the account types should be in the order of balance sheet on top of the income statement or assets, liabilities, equity, then income and expense. In other words, it wouldn't make sense for you to have a code number over here that said 500 for the checking account because then if you sort it by code the checking account's gonna be down here somewhere in the cost of goods sold section and that doesn't make sense. So you wanna subordinate your code numbers to the ordering of the accounts as you're creating them and be mindful of that. Also just realize that you might wanna have four to five digit code numbers so that you can leave enough space between each number so that in the future as you expand and want to add more accounts you're not locked out from doing so because you've named one account 31 and the next one 32 and so I can't put one in between them unless I start using decimals, right? That's a problem. So you wanna space out the account numbers as you enter them and think about having the assets start with like a one, the liabilities start with a two and so on and so forth and be mindful of that. And then you should have a nice clean trial balance if I sort by the code numbers which is gonna be the default that you're gonna wanna do pretty much all the time it will be in that nice order of the assets the liabilities, the equity and the expense accounts. So if I wanna drill down on any of these I can use that if I enter the transaction to cash I can jump over here and then I get into that familiar kind of transaction type of report a general ledger kind of report giving me the activity for that particular account and I can then further drill down onto the particular source entry form which is nice. So I'm gonna go back and now the next thing just note that in terms of the trial balance, debits and credits if we're in balance we're always gonna be in balance because zero is gonna force us to be in balance it won't let us enter things generally that put us out of balance we could see that by debits equaling the credits. That from a double entry accounting standpoint is kind of the same thing as the balance sheet having assets, total assets here equal liabilities plus equity but notice this is actually a little bit more clunky way to see it in terms of the balance sheet because you got all these subtotals you gotta add them up and do the equation and then the income statement fits into it as kind of like part of equity. If you understand the debits and credits it's actually a more efficient way to kind of think of the balancing concept which is one of the main or the principle, the main internal control of the double entry accounting system. So it's kind of worthwhile to figure out those debits and credits if you've been doing bookkeeping and you're like eh I can do it without the debits you can but it's easier to see sometimes if you understand the debits and credits but you don't need to know the debits and credits just to use this report. Then if you go up top you've got your sorting detail so if I wanted to compare this like to a prior month I have that kind of option up top so now I've got the debits and credits and then November activity up top here so we can do some kind of comparative reports with basically all the accounts and so I could say like two months and so that gives us more detail for the November. Notice it's showing these prior months not in terms of two columns, debits and credits but rather credits as bracketed numbers here just that's another way to format and see the credits which is a little bit more streamlined and easy I believe. You can uncheck some of the items here if you want to save some space possibly and then you've got your grouping options and you've got your filtering options here that we've seen with the other reports as well if you're set up something like the locations and then you can sort and filter out by location as well so useful report the trial balance I would practice getting used to using it instead of possibly opening up the balance sheet and the income statement if you're comfortable doing that to check your data input as you enter the data that'll streamline it lets you have less tabs open at one time allow you just to not have to scroll down as much every time you kind of want to like check the transaction it's more efficient that way.