What the Trial Balance shows
Open Trial Balance, under the "Financials" tools card (or the "Financials" group on desktop). It lists every account in your books with its number — 1000 Bank, 1100 Trade receivables, 2100 VAT control, 3000 Owner's capital, 4001 Services rendered, 6101 Fuel & oil and so on — and puts each balance in the Debit or the Credit column. Every SARS category you use is its own account under its heading, so fuel is 6101 under 6100 Motor vehicle, here and on your Profit & Loss. What you own and what you spend are debits; what you owe, what the business is worth to you and what you earn are credits. The two columns always add up to the same total, and the chip at the top says ✓ Balanced.
Nothing on it is worked out a second time. What you own, owe and are worth comes from your Balance Sheet, and income and expenses come from your Profit & Loss, so the Trial Balance can't disagree with either. Detailed shows every account; Summary folds income and expenses into their headings. Tap an account to open it in the General Ledger — every entry behind the balance, for the same dates.
Pick the period
- Tap the period chip under the title for This month, Last month, Tax year to date, Last tax year or Custom dates (any From and To since your books started), then Show. It opens on Tax year to date, and the dates stay in the address, so a link or a screenshot says what it shows.
- Accounts for what you own, owe and are worth carry their figure in from the day your books started, to the close of the last day — the same figures as your Balance Sheet on that day. 3000 Owner's capital is what the business was worth on day one, from Opening Balances.
- Income and expense accounts start the period at nothing, so they show only what you earned and spent between the two dates. If the period starts after your books did, the profit, money put in and drawings from before it are carried on one line, 3100.
Checks, and what 9999 Suspense means
Under the table, Checks shows Income less expenses — your profit for the period, the total of the income accounts less the cost and expense accounts — and whether anything is on 9999 Suspense.
9999 Suspense appears only when your Balance Sheet doesn't balance. The difference is parked there, the way a bookkeeper parks an entry they can't place yet, so that the two columns still agree — and the Trial Balance says out loud that they only do because of it. Checks lists what can be seen causing it, such as an invoice marked paid with no money logged against it, each with how to fix it and Go there › to the screen where it is fixed. Tap a line to see exactly which records are behind it, and tap one to open it. Fix those and the Suspense line disappears.
Send it to your accountant
- 📄 PDF and 📊 CSV / Excel at the bottom give you the Trial Balance for the dates you picked, Detailed or Summary as on the screen, with each account's number, so it lines up with your accountant's own. On a phone, each opens your phone's share menu with the file attached; on a computer it downloads.