 see what our total assets are, see what our total liabilities are, and make some quick comparisons, as we would do with the financial statements, with just this trial balance. Note that most textbooks, we're actually gonna introduce the trial balance before we introduce the general ledger. Why? Because the trial balance is a lot easier to look at, right? It's a lot easier to look at the trial balance, even though, if we think about the normal systematic format, we look, we do the trial balance after we do the general ledger, the trial balance being constructed from the ending balances of here, the general ledger. But it's gonna be easier to look at, so we wanna look at that first. In practice, note that the trial balance will typically be constructed by a computer system, as we enter data into the computer system. And a lot of times then, in that format, we're looking at the end result, the trial balance, or even the financial statements. And we typically wanna go back in time. For example, if I wanna know how we got to the 6,160 in the cash account, if I'm saying, hmm, that looks too high, or that looks too low, then we oftentimes, in that situation, say we've already constructed the trial balance, and then go back to the detail and say, let's see the detail to the general ledger. How is this ending number created? Where is my thinking going wrong, and me thinking that this balance is too high or too low? And we go back and find that detail. So that's another way we can kinda consider where the trial balance lies. It's used in order to construct the data. It's done from the general ledger when considering it from a practice standpoint, in terms of how is the company doing? Oftentimes we start from the end trial balance, the ending balances, and then we can think about looking backwards to that general ledger. Note that the trial balance is a great cheat sheet, meaning if you can have a cheat sheet for any kind of exams or anything like that, or when you're just practicing with problems, you wanna start off with a trial balance as a good cheat sheet, because even if it's not related to the problem that you are on, it will give you a lot of information, meaning it lists all the accounts. So if you're picking some of these accounts that you may not really know, such as under and revenue, it's kind of an account that takes a little while for most people to get, and not only get in terms of, now I know what under and revenue is, I've heard it a few times, but then is it a debit or credit balance? Often a question we don't really know until, but we can find it by looking at the trial balance. We can see here that it's in the credit side, it's gonna be a credit balance, and the trial balance therefore is a great cheat sheet to have. So I highly, highly recommend getting used to a trial balance and having it in front of you whenever working any problems, it'll tell you what the normal balances are for many accounts. When working with smaller problems, especially like multiple choice questions, they're not gonna give you enough information as you would have in real life, meaning in real life you would have access to a trial balance typically. In a book problem you will not, and so therefore if you can get one in front of you, I highly, highly recommend doing that. Note the key component of the trial balance being that the total assets equal the total, I mean, sorry, the total debits equal the total expenses, which is the trial balance format, the debit credit format of the accounting equation with a double entry accounting system of assets equal liabilities plus equity. So if assets equal liabilities plus equity, then it must be that total debits and total credits will be equal for all accounts involved. So we broke this out in terms of debits and credits. We can also do very quick calculations, meaning especially if I'm in Excel, I can just highlight these numbers in Excel and add them up, give me total assets. I can highlight these numbers, add them up, give me total liabilities. I can subtract the revenue minus the expenses and get the net income very quickly. I can just add up the total equity and get those numbers very quickly. We can actually maneuver around the trial balance a lot quicker than even the financial statements. If it's formatted well, and if it's in Excel, even faster, the reason we're gonna convert these to financial statements is because we're trying to convert it to something where people don't know debits and credits. But if you know debits and credits, this is actually a lot more versatile in many ways than actually the financial statements. You can basically pull a lot more information a bit quicker in this format sometimes than...