Trial Balance
Trial Balance
This option is used to report on the balances of all accounts in your Financial section for one or more specified periods.
You can access this option by selecting Reports > Financial > Trial Balance from the main menu or by clicking the Reports button on the Financial section and selecting Trial Balance from the menu.
On the left hand side of the Trial Balance you have the range panel which is common to all reporting options in Avanti. For the Trial Balance the range panel involves specifying the periods you want to see in the list and on the report. When you have defined the periods you want, you can hide this panel to expand the width of the Trial Balance list by clicking the split-panel bar displayed between the range panel and the list. You can click the split-panel bar again to show the range panel.
Periods
You can select up to 6 different periods on the trial balance report, each one you specify provides an additional band to the list displaying the Debit and Credit Balances for each selected period. By default the report has one period selected to display All Balances which provides total balances for all accounts regardless of period.
To select a period you can click the down-arrow button on the required Period box (or press Alt+DownArrow on your keyboard) and this will drop-down a list of standard periods for you to select from. The standard periods provided include the current month and previous 2 months, the 3 recent quarters and the current and 2 previous financial years. If one of these standard periods represent the required period you want to include then select from the list accordingly. If you want to clear the particular period from the report then select the None option at the bottom of the list.
If you prefer to specify a different period than the standard options provided in the drop-down list then you can click the Select Period link or the calendar icon displayed to the top right of each Period select box. You can also select the Other Period ... option from the drop-down list to select a bespoke period. When you click any of these options the software will display the Select Period window which allows you to more precisely define any specific period you require. See the Selecting Periods page for more information.
Clear All
At the bottom of the period panel is a link for Clear All. Click this link if you want to remove all of the additional periods you have selected for the report. This will clear all periods except Period 1 which must always be included.
Toolbar
The Toolbar provides several buttons to carry out key tasks :
Drill Down
Click the Drill Down button if you want to bring up an Account History to enable you to view the transaction activity for the selected account.
Click the Print button to produce the Trial Balance report. By default this will show an on-screen preview for you to view the report and you can then print it from the Preview window. If you prefer that the software send reports directly to the printer when selecting a Print option then you will need to change the Preview All Reports Before Printing setting in the Reports & Documents page in Company Preferences. See Company Preferences for more information.
Click the Email button to send an email to a specified recipient with a PDF document of the Trial Balance report attached to it. Once the report is produced you will be given an email window to enter the recipient's email address and the message you want to send with the report. See the Sending Emails page for more information.
Click the PDF button to export a PDF document of the report. Once the report is produced you will be given an export window which enables you to make settings about how you want the PDF document exported and whether you want to open it after it has been exported. You can then select where you want to save it and to save it under a specific file name. See the Exporting PDF Documents for more information.
Export
Click the Export button to export the report in the format of your choice. You will be given a menu of export options to select the format you want to export the report in. See Exporting Reports for more information.
Refresh
Click the Refresh button to refresh the list with information which may have changed elsewhere in the system since you opened the Trial Balance option. You can also refresh the data in the list by pressing the F5 button on your keyboard when the list is selected.
Customising The List
You can customise the list in various different ways including moving columns, sorting the list by a particular column, filtering the list based on your own criteria and more. See the Customising Lists section for more information. Any customisation you carry out on the list is saved, specific to you, so it will be displayed in the same way the next time you use the Trial Balance report.
In the list the first column displays a Look-Up (magnifying glass) icon next to each account. This is used to drill-down to view more more information about the account. When you click the Look-Up icon it invokes the same process as clicking the Drill Down button in the Toolbar.
You can also access additional options by right-clicking on the list and a pop-up menu will be displayed. This is just another way to get at many of the options available in the Toolbar. The options at the bottom of the right-click pop-up menu, starting from Group By This Field, are standard options for all lists in the software (see Customising Lists for more information). The option at the bottom of the menu is Export which enables you to export all of the information in the list in several formats including Excel, CSV and HTML.