QuickBooks main point of focus, apart from tracking financial transactions and activities, is generating and maintaining reports which showcases the entire growth and business development over the financial year. In order to provide maximum benefit to the user the software is integrated with innovative tools and features along with report templates that help to provide a base for generating reports for every process.
These reports are quite imperative and thus are recommended by users to go through proper QuickBooks training program aiming on according them with appropriate creation, understanding and customize the same reports. It will be beneficial for the user to learn and interpret the theory behind financial report and where to use them.
Prior to inception of computer based software for accounting tasks like QuickBooks, businesses used to prepare a Trial Balance Sheet or Report which used to consist and interpret details regarding the issues faced within the bookkeeping factor of the business. This is basically possible as the Trial Balance contains total of transactions entered into each and every account under Chart of Accounts wherein the debit section is displayed in the left side and credit on the right.
Trial Balance Sheet or Report
In order to generate a Trial Balance Sheet or Report under QuickBooks follow the instructions:
- Open the software and click on Reports tab from the main menu bar.
- Under the menu list click on Accountant and Taxes option followed by Trial Balance. This should open the new Report or Sheet for trial Balance.
This sheet is considered an imperative part of the Double Entry Accounting Process in QuickBooks. While using the software user has the advantage of not dealing with the confusion of putting items under debit or credit side of the sheet, as the software automatically completes these processes on its own with entry of every new transaction into the business. In order to view this sheet while the process is ongoing user has to select the Company option from main menu and further click on Make General Journal Entries option from the sub-menu. When processed backwards in the new screen, old entries can also be viewed in the systematic order they were entered within the software.
If needed the user can further showcase both Debit as well as the credit side within the report, for which following details need to be followed:
- Go to main menu and click on report followed by Trial Balance Sheet / Report.
- Once the report is open, select the option ‘Customize Report’ located in the top left side of the screen.
- Lastly a Dialog Box Report called Modify Report is opened under which select the ‘Display tab’.
- Under the box scroll through the Column and locate the Amount. In order to de-select the amount, checkmark the box.
- Next is to locate Credit and Debit and click on the columns from left in order to checkmark the box.
- Lastly click on OK which will showcase two columns, namely debit and credit.
Adjusted Trial Balance
An adjusted trial balance is generally used to reflect the changes made to an unadjusted trial balance (basically original). This is done so by adding columns in the right part of the report. Two columns are added:
- one to show the change in debits and
- The other for the change in credits.
A new grand total is reported under the new columns. User can employ adjusted trial balance during their month-end closing period to follow what work has already been entered into the statements.
An accurate Trial Balance does not mean, though, that there are no errors in the bookkeeping. Transactions may be missing, for example, or they may have been posted to the wrong account. If that is the case the user is advised to connect with the QuickBooks Expert team that is setup by Intuit for the purpose of resolving QuickBooks issues faced with the aggrieved users.