Trial balance checker
Balances — and then the harder question: is anything sitting on the wrong side of its normal?
- Runs
- In this tab
- Data sent
- None
- Rounding
- Once, at the end
- Also in
- The Chrome extension
Trial balance checker, worked
Showing a worked example — type over it
Result
How the trial balance checker works.
Trial balance checker: paste a TB, get the balance check plus sign anomalies against each account's normal balance (contra accounts carry the opposite one: accumulated depreciation and allowances a credit; sales returns, allowances and discounts, treasury stock and owner drawings a debit; bank and processing fees are read as expenses, not cash).
Quoted from the toolbelt spec, the document this tool was built against.
Where these numbers come from.
Negatives are parenthesised because that is what a statement does. The rest is four promises.
Minor units, never floats
Amounts are integers in the currency's smallest unit, end to end. A float never touches a cent.
Rounded once
Rounded once, at the end — never per operand, which is how a split stops summing to the whole.
Unit tested
The arithmetic lives in one unit-tested module, shared without reimplementation with the extension.
No network
There is no request to make. What you type stays in this tab and is gone when you close it.
More in the ledger itself
Read it in context
- Founder guide · 6 minChart of accounts for startups: a starting templateA starting chart of accounts for a US startup: number ranges, the expense accounts you need, and when to add an account versus a class or tracking tag.
- Founder guide · 5 minForm 1120: what to give your tax preparer, and whenWhat a startup hands its tax preparer for Form 1120: closed books, a balance sheet that ties to Schedule L, book-to-tax items, ownership and 1099s.
- Founder guide · 6 minGeneral ledger and double-entry bookkeeping, explainedHow double entry works: journal entries, debits and credits, normal balances, running balances, the trial balance, and why posted entries are reversed.
The same number, elsewhere.
A calculator answers the question once. These carry the answer into a product, name what it computed, and argue the method.
- ComponentTrialBalanceAll accounts with the debit=credit proof.
- ComponentChartOfAccountsHierarchy, statement mapping, unsupported-account flags.
- ComponentAccountTieOutEvery BS account, proven against its evidence.
- TermNormal balanceThe side that increases an account — debit for assets and expenses, credit for liabilities, equity and revenue, inverted for a contra account
- TermContra accountAn account with the opposite normal balance to its type, presented as a deduction from its parent — accumulated depreciation against PP&E, the allowance against AR
- TermControl accountA GL account whose balance is the total of a subledger — AR, AP, fixed assets — and is posted only from it
- TermTrial balanceEvery account's balance in two columns, proving that total debits equal total credits
- TermChart of accountsThe account structure
- DocThe accounting modelEvery component in Lopifi sits on top of one data model. If the model is wrong, no amount of design saves the product. This document is the model.
- DocCurrency decimal placesHow many decimals each ISO 4217 code is stored at — JPY 0, USD 2, KWD 3.