Quite simply, a trial balance is a worksheet listing the balances of each individual code at a certain date. 

The trial balance can help to detect errors in the accounts, such as receipts wrongly posted as a debit or posting a payment as a credit.  However, it cannot check whether individual transactions have been posted to the correct code.

This trial balance is divided into two columns, debits and credits and under bookkeeping rules the total of all debits must equal the total of all credits.

Payments are usually shown in the debit column. Positive bank balances or loans given will also be shown here, these are known as assets.

Conversely, receipts are usually shown in the credit column.  Negative bank balance or loans incurred will also be shown here, these are known as liabilities.

The trial balance can be printed out or exported to excel.  urthermore, you can generate historical reports for comparison against current year’s figures.