What are the functions of trial balance?

Answer 1

It is a summary of the balance of all accounts in the chart of accounts to, firstly, make sure the books are balanced. Then, these account balances are used to prepare financial statements. The trial balance is a worksheet on which you list all your general ledger accounts and their debit or credit balance. It is a tool that is used to alert you to errors in your books. The total debits must equal the total credits. If they don't equal, you know you have an error that must be tracked down. When closing out your books at the end of an accounting period, you will prepare three trial balances: 1. A preliminary trial balance is prepared using your general ledger account balances before you make adjusting entries. 2. An adjusted trial balance is done after preparing adjusting entries and posting them to your general ledger. This will help ensure that the books used to prepare your financial statements are in balance. 3. A post-closing trial balance is done after preparing and posting your closing entries. This trial balance, which should contain only balance sheet accounts, will help guarantee that your books are in balance for the beginning of the new accounting period. What if your trial balance does not balance? In other words, what if total debits don't equal total credits? This shouldn't surprise or discourage you. In fact, it might be more surprising if it does balance. Accounting errors happen. Even experienced bookkeepers normally have to find trial balance errors.

Answer 2

It necessary, from time to time, to check the General Ledger for accuracy. The process of drawing up a trial balance checks the arithmetic accuracy of the general ledger and whether all postings to the ledger observed the rules of double-entry bookkeeping.

Answer 3

A Trial Balance is only relevant if an organization uses double entry bookkeeping. If it does then every transaction is posted to more than one account so that the debits and credits are equal.

If You are speaking of a triple-beam-balance, then the answer is simple. It is a way to measure mass instead of weight. In any given location in the universe, things will weigh slightly (or greatly)...

Answer 4

A trial balance is a listing of all business accounts and their balances.

Common business accounts include but are not limited to: cash; accounts receivables; prepaids; property, plant and equipment; Accounts Payable; bank loans; taxes payable; shareholder loans and equity.

A trial balance should show the debit and credit balances in all accounts and should add to zero.

Maintaining a trial balance allows you to immediately check the balances of all of your accounts and can help you to find some errors in your entries.

Trial balance will be "out of balance" (ie. not add to zero) if you make one of the following errors:

If you accidently forget to book one side of an entry;

If both sides of the entry are not booked at the same amount;

If you accidently book the part of the entry as debit when it should be credit or visa versa.