Trial balance and chart of accounts integrity

What it does

Tests a trial balance and chart of accounts for the failures that propagate: unmapped accounts, duplicate accounts, sign exceptions, and dormant accounts.

This is the first thing to run on a new client, a cleanup engagement, or a software conversion, because everything else assumes the trial balance is sound. A reconciliation, a variance analysis, a cash flow statement, and a tax return are all built on it. If two accounts are duplicates, or an account maps to nothing, the error propagates into every downstream workpaper and is much harder to find there.

Debits equalling credits is necessary and tells you almost nothing — every accounting system enforces it. What it does not enforce: two accounts for the same thing, so a balance is split and neither number is right; an account mapped to no financial statement line, which silently drops out of the statements while the trial balance still balances; an asset with a credit balance, often real, sometimes a misposting, always worth a reason; and accounts nobody has used in years, which is where misposting hides because nobody reviews them.

What it proves

Eight tests, and no clean workpaper unless:

• Debits equal credits, to the cent.
• Every account maps to a financial statement line. An unmapped account is reported, never defaulted to a caption. A mapping that silently drops an account is the failure this test exists to prevent.
• The mapped statement subtotals foot back to the trial balance — assets, liabilities, equity, revenue and expense derived from the mapping must reproduce the trial balance totals.
• Every account has a type. An untyped account cannot be tested for sign or classification.

Duplicates are surfaced by normalised name, so Repairs & Maintenance and Repairs and Maintenance land in the same group with both balances shown. Nothing is merged automatically — merging changes comparatives and is a decision, so the tab carries a column for it instead.

Where prior-year figures are supplied it also checks that retained earnings agrees to prior-year retained earnings plus net income less distributions, which is one of the fastest ways to detect an entry posted directly to equity.

What you get

Eight tabs:

1. Integrity Summary — the eight tests, totals, the accounting equation, and counts by finding type. The signable page.
2. Trial Balance — every account with debit, credit, net, type, mapped statement line, prior year where supplied, movement, and any flag.
3. Unmapped Accounts — accounts with no statement line, with balances. Empty is the goal.
4. Mapping Proof — statement subtotals derived from the mapping against the trial balance totals.
5. Duplicate Candidates — grouped by normalised name, both balances shown, with a column for the merge decision.
6. Sign Exceptions — accounts with a balance opposite to their type, with a reason column.
7. Unused and Dormant — zero-balance and no-activity accounts, with a keep/close recommendation column.
8. Conversion Mapping — where a target structure is supplied, old account to new account, with unmapped accounts blocking the conversion.

Where it stops

It merges nothing and closes nothing. Duplicates and dormant accounts get a recommendation column and a decision that stays with the client.

An unmapped account with a material balance, duplicate accounts both carrying balances, a suspense or clearing or "other" account with a material balance at period end, control accounts with a balance opposite to expectation, a new account created late in the period with a material balance and few transactions, accounts named for an adjustment rather than a category (Plug, Difference, To balance, Conversion, Misc), a conversion balance account still holding a balance, retained earnings that does not agree: each is escalated as a fact.