The Right Balance

Accounting Technology,  December, 2006  by Ted Needleman

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Many accountants think of trial balance software as a subset of write-up. After all, the ultimate product of both applications is a set of financial statements. The intent of each application, however, is quite different. For many practices, a write-up engagement consists of capturing initial financial transactions (checks and deposits) to produce the original books of record, in addition to a set of adjusted financial statements.

These may be used for other tasks, but the output is usually not carried forward into a review or audit engagement, though it may be used to prepare tax returns. A trial balance package can accumulate a client's financial transaction data in order to prepare a tax return, though in many cases, only summary entries are made, such as monthly or quarterly totals. You may find it easier to use a trial balance package for review, compilation, and audit engagements. While you can use ...