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Finally, when the new accounting period is about to begin, you would run the post-closing trial balance, which reflects your totals going forward into the new accounting period. All trial balance reports are run to make sure that debits and credits remain in balance. Totals of both the debit and credit columns will be calculated at the bottom end of the post-closing trial balance. These columns should balance, otherwise, it would likely mean that there has been an error in the posting of the adjusting entries. Closing temporary accounts is an important step in the accounting cycle, and running the post-closing trial balance helps to make sure that the process has been completed accurately. The unadjusted trial balance is the first trial balance that you’ll prepare, and it should be completed after all entries for the accounting period have been completed.

Post-Closing Trial Balance in the Business Accounting Process

A post-closing trial balance is a trial balance which is prepared after all of the temporary accounts in the general ledger have been closed. Because you made closing entries for revenue and https://personal-accounting.org/the-postclosing-trial-balance-3/ expenses, those accounts do not appear on the post-closing trial balance. You’ll also notice that the owner’s capital account has a new balance based on the closing entries you made earlier.

• However, all the other accounts having non-negative balances are listed, including the retained earnings account.
• A post-closing trial balance is a listing of all balance sheet accounts containing non-zero balances at the end of a reporting period.
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• If you’re not using accounting software, consider using a trial balance worksheet, which can be used to calculate account totals.
• Each account balance is transferred from their ledger accounts to the post-closing trial balance.

It closes out balances in both expense and revenue accounts, which allows you to start tracking these totals again in the new accounting period. The purpose of closing entries is to close all temporary accounts and adjust the balances of real accounts such as owner’s capital. Like all of your trial balances, the post-closing balance of debits and credits must match. As you can see, the accounts are generally listed in balance sheet order starting with the assets followed by the liabilities and then equity accounts. If these two don’t equal, there is either a problem with closing entries or the adjusted trial balance. Preparing the post-closing trial balance will follow the same process that took to create the unadjusted or adjusted trial balance.

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The trial balance worksheet contains columns for both income statement and balance sheet entries, allowing you to easily combine multiple entries into a single amount. This makes sure that your beginning balances for the next accounting cycle are accurate. Even if you’re using accounting software, running a trial balance can be important because it allows you to review account balances for accuracy. While all of the adjusting entries for ABC Business are reflected in the adjusted trial balance, we still need to do some closing entries before running the post-closing trial balance. Temporary accounts, like expenses and sales, will not show up on the post-closing statement.

Permanent accounts are accounts that once opened will always be a part of a company’s chart of accounts. Temporary accounts are accounts that are not always a part of a company’s chart of accounts. The balances in temporary accounts are zeroed out at the end of each accounting period by transferring them to a permanent account. The reason for this is so that they can be used again in the next accounting period.

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Another peculiar thing about Bob’s post-closing trial balance is that normally a retained earnings account will have a credit balance, but in Bob’s books, it has a debit balance. The reason is that Bob did not make a profit in the first month of his operations. Next will be a listing of all of the general ledger balance sheet accounts (except those with $0.00 balances) along with each account’s balance appearing in the appropriate debit or credit column.

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• It ensures that at the end of an accounting period, the sum of the total debits is equal to the sum of the total credits.
• Below is an example of a business accounting team using post-closing entries in their accounts.

A post-closing trial balance is the final trial balance prepared before the new accounting period begins. Used to make sure that beginning balances are correct, the post-closing trial balance is also used to ensure that debits and credits remain in balance after closing entries have been completed. Since most trial balances do not list accounts with zero balances, the post-closing trial balance will include only general ledger balance sheet accounts having balances other than $0.00. The debit and credit amount columns will be summed and the totals should be identical. After the closing entries are journalized and posted, only permanent, balance sheet accounts remain open.