QuickBooks Trial Balance

Why it balances, and what that does and does not prove

A trial balance balances by construction. Each transaction QuickBooks saves writes equal debits and credits, so adding up every account’s ending balance has to come out even. On paper ledgers a mismatch pointed at a posting or addition error. In QuickBooks Online the arithmetic is done for you, so equal totals are the normal state and tell you very little on their own.

The errors that matter survive a balanced trial balance untouched. A sale posted to the wrong income account still balances. A Stripe payout recorded twice balances, because both copies are complete entries. A month of fees never recorded balances, because nothing was entered on either side. A refund recorded as a sale with the sign reversed balances. Each of these moves money between lines without disturbing the totals.

So read the report line by line against numbers you can verify outside QuickBooks: the bank statement, the Stripe balance, the loan statement, the payroll register. The trial balance is the list of what to check, not the check itself.

Trial Balance, Adjusted Trial Balance and the Workpapers view

QuickBooks Online has more than one version of the report, and they answer slightly different questions.

The Trial Balance report is the ledger as it stands on the date you choose. Run it as of the last day of a month and it shows every account’s closing balance for that month.

The Adjusted Trial Balance adds the accountant’s layer. Intuit describes it as listing "all account balances in the general ledger before and after you make adjusting journal entries," along with "the total adjusting entries." Adjusting entries are journal entries an accountant marks with the "Is Adjusting Journal Entry?" checkbox in QuickBooks Online Accountant. Intuit’s examples are depreciation or amortization, reallocating accruals, adjusting tax payables for interest or penalties, and entering bank or credit card fees. You find the report under Reports, in Standard reports, or through the search bar.

Accountants working in QuickBooks Online Accountant Workpapers also get a Trial Balance View under the Review and Adjust tab. Intuit describes it as showing beginning and ending balances for accounts and year-over-year changes, with debits, credits, percentage changes and amount changes side by side.

What a Stripe business should check on it at month end

Stripe activity reaches QuickBooks through a handful of accounts, and the trial balance puts all of them on one page. Run it as of the month-end date and check these lines.

The Stripe clearing account. If Stripe sales are recorded into a regular asset account that stands in for the Stripe balance, that account’s balance on the report date should equal your Stripe balance on the same date. Stripe’s balance is rarely zero, because recent charges are still pending when the month ends, so a clearing account that reads exactly zero can be as suspicious as one that has drifted. Any difference is money recorded in one place and not the other.

Undeposited Funds, if you use it for Stripe. Its balance is the payments recorded but not yet swept into a deposit. It will not match your Stripe balance at an arbitrary moment, but a figure that keeps growing month after month usually means payouts are not being matched to the payments they contain.

Stripe fees. The fee expense account for the month should agree with Stripe’s own fee total for the same period. A month that reads zero or half the usual amount points at fees that were never recorded, which a balanced trial balance will never flag by itself.

Opening Balance Equity. When you enter an opening balance for a bank or credit card account, Intuit says the Opening Balance Equity account automatically tracks it. A balance there that nobody can explain, especially one that grows after setup, usually means entries were posted to it that belong somewhere else.

Exchange Gain or Loss, in a multicurrency file. If you hold foreign balances and this line is empty, the foreign accounts have probably not been revalued yet.

The close itself, including when to lock the period, is a separate process. The related reading below covers it.

When the totals do not match

Unequal totals are rare in QuickBooks Online, and when they happen they are rarely a problem inside the ledger itself. Check the report settings first. A trial balance filtered to some accounts, customers or classes leaves part of the ledger out, and the part left out is exactly where the other side of some entries lives.

If the unfiltered report still does not balance, stop and look before posting anything to force it. A plug entry to an equity or suspense account makes the totals agree and hides whatever caused the gap. Compare the report against the balance sheet and profit and loss for the same date, and if the difference persists, it is a question for Intuit support or your accountant rather than for a journal entry.