(15)-THE TRIAL BALANCE

The Trial Balance

At the end of the accounting period, a balance is struck on each accounting in turn. This means that all the debits on the account are totaled and so are all the credits. If the total debits exceed the total credits there is said to be a debit balance on the account if the credits exceed the debits then the account has a credit balance.

This list is called trial balance. It does not matter in what order the various accounts are listed.
The trial balance is a list of ledger balances shown in debit and credit columns.

There is no foolproof method, but a technique which shows up the more obvious mistakes is to prepare a trial balance.
If the two columns of the trial balance are not equal, there must be an error in recording the transactions in the accounts.

However trial balance not discloses the following types of errors.

• Error of principal.
• The posting of a credit or debit to the correct side of ledger but to a wrong account.
• The complete omission of a transaction.
• Compensation errors. An error is exactly cancelled by another error elsewhere.