In: Accounting
How would you explain the purpose of the adjusted trial balance? When is the trial balance prepared?
An adjusted trial balance is a listing of all the account titles
and balances contained in the general ledger after the adjusting
entries for an accounting period have been posted to the
accounts.
The adjusted trial balance is an internal document and is not a
financial statement. The purpose of the adjusted trial balance is
to be certain that the total amount of debit balances in the
general ledger equals the total amount of credit
balances.
When ledger postings are completed and accounts are balanced, the next phase in the accounting cycle is preparation of a Trial Balance. This phase helps to verify whether sum of the debit balances is equal to the sum of the credit balances. This is an essential phase before proceeding further to prepare the final accounts at the end of accounting period. However, Trial Balance is generally prepared at quarterly interval in practice to check the arithmetic accuracy of accounts.
Trial Balance is a statement of ledger balances at a particular point of time. At all points of time sum of all debit balances must be equal to sum of all credit balances.