Doing the trial balance reminded me of doing the account statements back in term 3 2019. It was a fun experience, putting all the newly developed knowledge to use and tinkering with numbers to see if they balance like they should. To be honest with you, I think I spent more time on this section than I should’ve and I’m going to blame tired eyes for not seeing what was in front of me.

Honestly, after doing this exercise its clear to see that trial balances aren’t overly complicated. The most complicated part of a trial balance is understanding your company’s reports. When entering the figures from the balance sheet into the trial balance, the format was very basic. Negatives were inside brackets, positives were normal. I tricked myself up at the start by putting positives in the credit column and negatives in the debit column until I was about to move onto the income statement and the lightbulb flicked on. An increase in an asset is a debit meaning the assets need to be placed in the debit column unless of course they are a negative. Who knew that writing down Asset = Debit a few times would flood back randomly when looking at numbers?

When it came time to close off the trial balance, I was looking at the ‘Total comprehensive income/(expense) recognised for the year ended 30 June 2019’ and trying to figure out where those figures came from. I spent a solid 1-2 hours tinkering with equations to try and match the figures to a total on my spreadsheet but no dice. After about 5 coffees, a bit of sleep and a clear mind, I saw that right above the section I was looking at lied the profit/loss, actuarial loss on pension scheme and tax on items above taken directly to equity. Low and behold, here are the figures I have desperately been searching for! I go back to the explanation video Maria Tyler has done to make sure I’m not going crazy, I follow the steps and there it is! A perfectly balanced sheet. Sheer joy is what I feel and what a feeling it is!

Although the trial balance zeros at the end, I was second guessing myself for 1 tiny bit. Under the revenue section of my income statement, Finance income totals 7.1 which is exactly the total made up in the issue of shares (0.4 in share capital and 6.7 in share premium) row under the total comprehensive income SOCIE section. To squash this doubt in my mind, I read the notes regarding finance income and turns out that it’s just income relating to employee benefits, interest receivable and short-term bank deposits. After reading this, I know its safe to keep the calculations exactly how they are rather than splitting the finance income across share capital and share premium as depicted in the total comprehensive income SOCIE section.