Trial Balance that shows beginning & ending balance, debits/credits & net activity

Hello @jriley1414,

At this time, there isn't an option to customize your Trial Balance report to show the beginning and ending balance of an account. You'll want to open the transaction detail of your account to see the net activity, opening, and ending balance.

I'm adding a reference here for ideas about managing reports and accounting.

Reach out to me if you have any other ques

I am sorry to say I can't "cheer" for this solutions. Many companies, including ours, are utilizing mapped models in Excel to create financials. We are creating consolidated, condensed reports for a Board of Directors and a PE firm. Mapping for mid-sized companies is very commonplace.

A trial balance that shows beginning & ending balance, debits/credits & net activity is mapped into several reports in the model. If MYOB and AccountEdge can offer this report format as a standard report, I'd like to think QB can do it as well. I am a QB user since 1999.

I'd further like to think that, as I was not the only person seeking this identical format a standard report can be created as opposed to sitting through several hours of advanced reporting videos to only discover there is no way to create the report yourself.

Thank you!

Thanks for the response, @jriley1414.

I'm submitting feedback to our Product Development Team about bringing in a report into QuickBooks Desktop that will show the beginning/ending balance, debits/credits, and net activity or bring in a feature that will allow you to customize the Trial Balance.

In the meantime, I'd recommend customizing and exporting reports into Excel so they can be combined into one. I'm going to leave you with a couple of Community Articles that will provide with more information on Reports and Excel:

• Customize Reports in QuickBooks Desktop

• Export Reports as Excel Workbooks in QuickBooks Desktop

If you need further assistance or have additional questions, just know that I'm just right around the corner! Have a beautiful day.

This is one of the major drawbacks of QB. My auditors are asking for trial balance with details of opening balance, total debit and credit and the closing balance. I am however not able to generate the trial balance in this format.

I agree with all comments about the inability to produce a TB that shows beginning and ending balances and activity.  It is a common request by auditors.  Please fix this.

It seems ludicrous for an accounting software to not have the ability to run a functioning Trial Balance. This is beyond a drawback. Intuit should do everything to remedy this shortfall immediately, which does not appear to be such a big task, but it sure creates a bad reputation about product and service. This is a necessary and standard report for any accounting software. Please listen QB, and fill this void and inadequacy. 

Completely agree. This is a HUGE fail on Quickbooks. I also work in Procas, which is a double entry journal system; as basic as you get, but approved for government accounting. Even Procas produces a trial balance showing beginning balance, debits, credits, and end balance. This should be a standard report format for all trial balances across all platforms, and right now Quickbooks seems to be the only platform not prividing this. Saying im dissapointed is an unerstatement.

I don't believe we are the only ones feeling this way. the question is, what is QB going to do about it? probably nothing. this can't be a new problem and has gone on for many years. wish we had a way for Intuit to listen and make changes.

Thanks for replying.

If you just go through the chart of accounts and open a specific account you have beg bal, end bal, and detail but there is no way to narrow the dates to the range you want.  (I would like to be able to print the full TB or any individual account I wanted.).  I guess all I can do is export to google sheets and create a tb type report there.

Greetings QB, We need a 6 column trial Balance!!!; Opening Balance(Debit/Credit), Movements(Debit/Credit), and closing Balance(Debit/Credit). This drawback sincerely makes your Software useless in OHADA(Francophone sub-Sahara African Countries).

Hi Yensin!

I understand that you need to add more data to your Trial Balance report. Let me help you.

The Trial Balance only shows the lists of all accounts on your Chart of Accounts and their totals as either debits or credits. Currently, we're unable to customize it the way we edit the other reports.

You'll want to pull up the General Ledger report. From the Reports menu, hover over Accountant & Taxes, and select the said report. This shows all transactions on each account including the Opening Balance entries. The amount under the Balance column is your closing.

Here are some of the articles you'll want to check. These will show you how to available reports and how to customize them:

• Understand reports
• Customize reports

Need more help? Comment again here and we'll assist you. Take care!

I agree with Yensin - this is a very basic report that many organizations use - it should be added to the standard reports: REPORTS > ACCOUNTANT & TAXES > (and add) "Working Trial balance."

The report exists in the 'Accountant" version of QuickBooks (and no, we cannot switch versions as we use "Manufacturing and Wholesale" version), and we are failing to understand why this report cannot be added as an update the next time Intuit releases an update. 

Kind regards,

Jeannine Riley, MBA

Agreed! It is essentially the "working trial balance" from the 'Accountant" version of QB; why Intuit cannot add it in the next update is a mystery to me. Their suggestion is that we spend $500 on 3rd party software (Trial Balance Exporter - called TBX). My organization is not big on 3rd party software, so we will likely NOT renew our QB subscription and move to another software when the subscription runs out in Oct. '21.

In many accounting software TRIAL BALANCE that shows beginning & ending balance, debits/credits & net activity  IS NOT REPORT. Its is first page, First what you see when you open your accounting and software. 

AND you navigate from it. You click on any account and you are in any particular account. IMEGiNE ChART of Accounts on the left side, and next in this order -.Starting Balance - Debit - Credit - Difference (net activity) - Ending Balance. What do u need more. Click on any account and you into this account. WHY USA uses miles, Pounds when rest of the world uses km, KG... Same here in accounting. Whole accounting world is going towards IFRS and USA has his own GAAP. 

I'm trying to revive this topic as we're also struggling to understand how a report like this has been omitted or customized.  There are no good reasons to keep it out!

-Edward

Hello, Edward.

I can see how this report can be useful for you and your business. 

You can submit feedback to our Product Developers so they might add it to their future product enhancements. Let me guide you through the steps on how to do it:

1. Go to the Help menu at the top.
2. Select Send Feedback Online.
3. Click Product Suggestion.
4. Choose a feedback type and product area on the QuickBooks Feedback window. 
5. Once done, click on the Send Feedback button.

With your feedback, they'll be able to see what they need to improve and what new features you would like them to add in a future product update.

In the meantime, you'll want to perform the suggestion provided by my peer above to pull up the General Ledger report that will show all transactions on each account, including the Opening balance.

You can always come back to the Community with any suggestions or questions again in the future. All of us are eager to help.

This does not solve the issue as many companies (such as ours) run financials off of the trial balance. Your suggestion is great for a "spot check" - it does not fix the (lack of) functionality issue. The feature IS available in the accountant's version. Intuit could possibly create an update or patch that adds the report.

Thanks for getting back with the Community about this, jriley1414.

I can certainly understand how an ability to customize your trial balance report so that it shows the beginning and ending balance of an account, debit/credit totals, and net activity could be useful and have submitted a suggestion about it as of today.

This feedback's definitely valuable to Intuit. You can also submit your own feature requests on our website. They'll be reviewed by Intuit's Product Development team and considered in future updates.

You can stay up-to-date with the latest news about your product by reviewing our Product Updates webpage.

If there's any questions, I'm just a post away. Have an awesome day!

I am running QB Enterprise 2021 and wanted to chime in on the working trial balance. QB still needs to create a report that shows the beginning balance, credits, debits, net transactions, and ending balance that we can display with detail or summarized. However, someone here mentioned a working trial balance which I found out how to run but it only displays Beginning Balance, Net Transaction Total, Adjustments, and Ending Balance.

In QB menu bar, go to Lists -> Chart of Accounts. Once the list opens, right click on any account row then left click Working Trial Balance.

I also found the working trial balance available at:

Menu Bar -> Company -> Accounting Tools -> Working Trial Balance

If QucikBooks online provide this reporting facility it would be great support that giving your customers.

Because auditors asking for a TB with movement details. The current format is not fulfilling our needs.

Hope that QBO may provide this Option 

Thanks and regards

Try this -- Not perfect, but it works 70% of the time. 

1. Run a GL report for one month

2. Filter by totals (you will see the acc totals for debits and credits)

3. Delete the “Total…..” so that only the account numbers and names show (=right(A3,LEN(A3)-6), assuming you need to get rid of the first 6 letters and your acc number and name is in A3.

4. Use this with V or X lookup to fill out debit and credit cells next to your beg balances

5.  Add your

beg + debit - credit = ending for  assets/exp

beg - debit + credit = ending for liab/eq/revenue

6. double check your ending balances w the current month’s Trial Balance for accuracy. 

7. Fix the ones that did not work (20-30% in my case because of the ones with "-other" and other strange reasons.

8. For the Net Change, some people posted good answers: REPORTS > ACCOUNTANT & TAXES > (and add) "Working Trial balance

Hope this helps!! I will make a YouTube video too (soon). 
Erica

The sub-names do not seem to work with the v or x look up because the TB has the parent names + the sub names when the GL does not.

70% is not bad.

Erica

This will fix the Trial Balance's account names to show just the root account names:

To create a Trial Balance report showing only the sub-accounts, go to Edit | Preferences | Accounting | | Company Preferences and then in the Accounts box, enable "Show lowest subaccount only".

Once this is done, the v look up and x look up will work. 

Erica