These adjusting entries include depreciation expenses, prepaid expenses, insurance expenses, and accumulated depreciation. Once your adjusting entries have been made, you’re ready to run your adjusted trial balance. If you look in the balance sheet columns, we do have the new, up-to-date retained earnings, but it is spread out through two numbers. If you combine these two individual numbers ($4,665 – $100), you will have your updated retained earnings balance of $4,565, as seen on the statement of retained earnings. In the Printing Plus case, the credit side is the higher figure at $10,240. This means revenues exceed expenses, thus giving the company a net income.

• IFRS requires that accounts be classified into current and noncurrent categories for both assets and liabilities, but no specific presentation format is required.
• The post-closing trial balance is the last step in the accounting cycle.
• These balances in
  post-closing T-accounts are transferred over to either the debit or
  credit column on the post-closing trial balance.
• Transferring information from T-accounts to the trial balance requires consideration of the final balance in each account.
• My Accounting Course  is a world-class educational resource developed by experts to simplify accounting, finance, & investment analysis topics, so students and professionals can learn and propel their careers.

A post-closing trial balance is a trial balance which is prepared after all of the temporary accounts in the general ledger have been closed. The ninth, and typically final, step of the process is to
prepare a post-closing trial balance. The word “post” in this
instance means “after.” You are preparing a trial balance
after the closing entries are
complete.

It is important to go through each step very carefully and recheck your work often to avoid mistakes early on in the process. One of the most well-known financial schemes is that involving the companies Enron Corporation and Arthur Andersen. Enron defrauded thousands by intentionally inflating revenues that did not exist. Arthur Andersen was the auditing firm in charge of independently verifying the accuracy of Enron’s financial statements and disclosures.

Prepare a Post-Closing Trial Balance

If the debit column were larger, this would mean the expenses were larger than revenues, leading to a net loss. You want to calculate the net income and enter it onto the worksheet. The $4,665 net income is found by taking the credit of $10,240 and subtracting the debit of $5,575. When entering net income, it should be written in the column with the lower total. You then add together the $5,575 and $4,665 to get a total of $10,240. If you review the income statement, you see that net income is in fact $4,665.

• When one of these statements is inaccurate, the financial implications are great.
• The statement of retained earnings (which is often a component of the statement of stockholders’ equity) shows how the equity (or value) of the organization has changed over a period of time.
• (Figure)Identify which of the following accounts would be listed on the company’s Post-Closing Trial Balance.
• It closes out balances in both expense and revenue accounts, which allows you to start tracking these totals again in the new accounting period.
• Take a couple of minutes and fill in the income statement and balance sheet columns.

Harold Averkamp (CPA, MBA) has worked as a university accounting instructor, accountant, and consultant for more than 25 years. He is the sole author employment eligibility of all the materials on AccountingCoach.com. Provide the web link to the company’s Form 10-K, to allow accurate verification of your answers.

At this point, the accounting cycle is complete, and the company
can begin a new cycle in the next period. In essence, the company’s
business is always in operation, while the accounting cycle
utilizes the cutoff of month-end to provide financial information
to assist and review the operations. Another way to find an error is to take the difference between the two totals and divide by nine. If the outcome of the difference is a whole number, then you may have transposed a figure. For example, let’s assume the following is the trial balance for Printing Plus.

Post-closing trial balance definition

If you have
never followed the full process from beginning to end, you will
never understand how one of your decisions can impact the final
numbers that appear on your financial statements. You will not
understand how your decisions can affect the outcome of your
company. Preparing an unadjusted trial balance is the fourth step in the accounting cycle.

BUS103: Introduction to Financial Accounting

(Figure)Identify which of the following accounts would not be listed on the company’s Post-Closing Trial Balance. (Figure)Identify whether each of the following accounts would be listed in the company’s Post-Closing Trial Balance. The post-closing trial balance for Printing Plus is shown in (Figure). If a trial balance is in balance, does this mean that all of the numbers are correct?

If there are any temporary accounts on this trial balance, you would know that there was an error in the closing process. Many students who enroll in an introductory accounting course do not plan to become accountants. They will work in a variety of jobs in the business field, including managers, sales, and finance. Accounting software can perform such tasks as posting the journal entries recorded, preparing trial balances, and preparing financial statements.

Unearned revenue had a credit balance of $4,000 in the trial balance column, and a debit adjustment of $600 in the adjustment column. Remember that adding debits and credits is like adding positive and negative numbers. This means the $600 debit is subtracted from the $4,000 credit to get a credit balance of $3,400 that is translated to the adjusted trial balance column. The 10-column worksheet is an all-in-one spreadsheet showing the transition of account information from the trial balance through the financial statements. Accountants use the 10-column worksheet to help calculate end-of-period adjustments. Using a 10-column worksheet is an optional step companies may use in their accounting process.

The Post-Closing Trial Balance

Looking at the asset section of the balance sheet, Accumulated Depreciation–Equipment is included as a contra asset account to equipment. The accumulated depreciation ($75) is taken away from the original cost of the equipment ($3,500) to show the book value of equipment ($3,425). The accounting equation is balanced, as shown on the balance sheet, because total assets equal $29,965 as do the total liabilities and stockholders’ equity. At the bottom of the debit balance and credit balance columns will be a total for each. When accounting software is used, the totals should always be identical.

2 Prepare a Post-Closing Trial Balance

Unlike previous trial balances, the retained earnings figure is included, which was obtained through the closing process. Since temporary accounts are already closed at this point, the post-closing trial balance will not include income, expense, and withdrawal accounts. It will only include balance sheet accounts, a.k.a. real or permanent accounts. The last step in the accounting cycle (not counting reversing entries) is to prepare a post-closing trial balance. They are prepared at different stages in the accounting cycle but have the same purpose – i.e. to test the equality between debits and credits. The post closing trial balance is a list of all accounts and their balances after the closing entries have been journalized and posted to the ledger.

The ninth, and typically final, step of the process is to prepare a post-closing trial balance. The word “post” in this instance means “after.” You are preparing a trial balance after the closing entries are complete. After Paul’s Guitar Shop posted its closing journal entries in the previous example, it can prepare this post closing trial balance. Since only balance sheet accounts are listed on this trial balance, they are presented in balance sheet order starting with assets, liabilities, and ending with equity.

This balance is transferred to the Cash account in the debit column on the unadjusted trial balance. Accounts Payable ($500), Unearned Revenue ($4,000), Common Stock ($20,000) and Service Revenue ($9,500) all have credit final balances in their T-accounts. These credit balances would transfer to the credit column on the unadjusted trial balance. Once all ledger accounts and their balances are recorded, the debit and credit columns on the trial balance are totaled to see if the figures in each column match each other.

Now that we have completed the accounting cycle, let’s take a
look at another way the adjusted trial balance assists users of
information with financial decision-making. Now that we have completed the accounting cycle, let’s take a look at another way the adjusted trial balance assists users of information with financial decision-making. After posting the above entries, all the nominal accounts would zero-out, hence the term “closing entries”. In these columns we record all asset, liability, and equity accounts. Instead, they are accounting department documents that are not distributed.

If the final balance in the ledger account (T-account) is a credit balance, you will record the total in the right column. It is worth mentioning that there is one step in the process that a company may or may not include, step 10, reversing entries. Reversing entries reverse an adjusting entry made in a prior period at the start of a new period. We do not cover reversing entries in this chapter, but you might approach the subject in future accounting courses.

Next you will take all of the figures in the adjusted trial balance columns and carry them over to either the income statement columns or the balance sheet columns. Finally, when the new accounting period is about to begin, you would run the post-closing trial balance, which reflects your totals going forward into the new accounting period. All trial balance reports are run to make sure that debits and credits remain in balance.