Accounting glossary
What is trial balance?
The list of every account with its debit or credit balance, totalled to prove the ledger balances. It is the accountant's first screen and the raw material of every statement — if the trial balance is wrong, stop and find out why.
Example
Total debits of $783,950,958.40 against identical total credits means the ledger is internally consistent — nothing is lost or half-written.
It does not prove the books are right: an amount posted to the wrong account still balances perfectly. It proves nothing is missing, which is the first thing to establish.
In SeroBooks
One click in Accounting, drillable into any account's ledger. Financial statements →
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