[GNC] GNUcash 5 - Trial Balance

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 4/28/2023 2:59 AM, Chris Bastock via gnucash-user wrote:
> Thanks for all the input.
> I am aware that both TB and Balance sheet are snapshots on a particular date and of the respective uses of both of them. Personally I’m happy with the TB report and I do it periodically throughout the year. I guess my reason for asking was only because my accountant had asked specifically for a TB covering only the financial year that they were auditing the accounts for.
>
> The TB report options are misleading as it does offer a date range. Maybe the only solution to keeping my accountant happy is to close the books each year (although according to the GNUCash manual this isn’t necessary).
>
> The zero balances I was referring to were more to do with accounts that I just don’t use. So the take home for me is that I need to clean up my account tree!

If you consider how "trial balance" used to be used, a "date range" sort 
of makes sense.

In the old days, after a trial balance, a double line was drawn under 
each account. The meaning of which was "in balance as of this point". 
When searching for an OOB error, you didn't need to search before a 
double line. It was in balance at that point, so any OOB now has to be 
an entry after that point. Is the date range offered perhaps trying to 
mimic that?

Like I said, I have not (bothered to) run a "trial balance" since BEFORE 
switching to gnucash. A computerized bookkeeping application simply 
isn't going to make the sort of errors a trial balance would disclose 
(and help us find*). If there is nothing in Imbalance or Orphan, the 
books are in balance. Yes, we could have made errors of the "put into 
wrong account" sort but that would not be disclosed by a trial balance. 
The errors a trial balance will disclose are things like the all too 
common transposition of digits during manual posting from the journal to 
the ledger. The computer simply won't make that sort of error.

Michael D Novack

* Examples (we had to learn all sorts of tricks like this) So the trial 
balance is out of balance? By how much? Is the difference divisible by 
9? Then look for transposed digits.