Trial Balance Question

[Buffalofoodshelf1]

We have a new finance director, and she asked me to run a Trial Balance report. On the report, the Unrestricted Net Assets shows the begining balance and the current balance and they are the same number. So it's not showing anything in the period actual column. I'll be honest I never run a Trial Balance report! I must be missing something in my set up that is prohibiting the period numbers to pull into the report.

Appreciate any input!

[NeilZ]

We have a new finance director, and she asked me to run a Trial Balance report. On the report, the Unrestricted Net Assets shows the begining balance and the current balance and they are the same number. So it's not showing anything in the period actual column. I'll be honest I never run a Trial Balance report! I must be missing something in my set up that is prohibiting the period numbers to pull into the report.

Appreciate any input!

Hmmm .... I never run a trial balance to check the numbers just to make sure that the bottom line is always zero. That said, I just checked with my system and no matter what month I select the unrestricted number stays the same.

Let me flag this for the techs, they probably understand this better than I do.

[Zorak]

My initial thought was like yours, what report options/selections are you choosing when running the report?

[Buffalofoodshelf1]

Update to add - the "Beginning Balances Only" is NOT checked. All income and expense have figures in beginning balance, period actual, and current balance. The Unrestricted Net Assets doesn't show anything for the period actual, and she thinks that it should.

[Zorak]

I think I understand the actual question now.

The Trial Balance report is showing the amounts of actual debits or credits in transactions that have been posted against each account. If you haven't directly debited or credited the account in the selected period, the Period Actual column will be zero. For accounts in the equity (AKA net assets/fund balance) category, this would be as expected, as you normally aren't posting transactions directly against those accounts unless you are doing balance adjustments/corrections.

Other Accounting reports like the Balance Sheet will include the amounts of income, expense, and transfer accounts that have "closed to" the equity account in its balance calculation. The Trial Balance doesn't do this, as it would make the report output incorrect, essentially showing the income, expense, and transfer amounts doubled (reported in both the income, expense, and transfer accounts for direct transactions as well as the equity accounts for the closing amounts).

The important part of the Trial Balance is the row of 0.00s across the subtotals for each accounting fund and the 0.00s in the grand totals at the end. This tells you that the debits and credits in the posted transactions during the selected period were properly balanced.

[Buffalofoodshelf1]

Thank you.