Statements¶
The three standard accounting statements, built from what has been posted.
What each one tells you¶
Trial Balance — every ledger with its balance, debits against credits. Its job is to show that total debits equal total credits. If they do not, something is wrong upstream and the other two statements inherit it.
A balanced Trial Balance does not mean the entries are right. It means they are balanced: a purchase posted to the wrong ledger still balances perfectly. It rules out one kind of error, not all of them.
Profit & Loss — income against expenses for the period. This is the "did we make money" statement.
Balance Sheet — what the business owns and owes at a point in time: assets, liabilities and equity.
"Provisional until Period Close"¶
Statements for a period that has not been locked are labelled provisional, and the label says why: the period is not locked yet.
Provisional does not mean wrong. It means the period is still open, so a later posting can still change these figures. Locking the period restricts further posting into it, which is what makes its statements stable — a locked period can still be reopened formally, so "locked" is a restriction rather than a permanent seal. See Period Close.
If you are sending figures to anyone outside the business, that label is the thing to check first.
Empty sections are answers¶
Each statement names what is absent rather than showing a blank: no ledgers configured, no income posted in this period, no asset ledgers with a balance.
That tells you nothing matched, not that the books are complete. "No expenses posted in this period" means no expense postings were found for the period and outlet you are looking at. Whether that is correct is a separate question — and if you expected expenses, it is the interesting one.
Cash Flow is not available¶
There is a Cash Flow surface, and it explains its own absence: producing one needs a further classification the product does not yet hold — which ledgers are cash or bank, and an operating/investing/financing split. That has not been designed, so it has not been guessed at.
Every figure here belongs to a period, and to an outlet¶
A statement is always "for this range, for this outlet". Change either and every number changes with it. Before comparing two statements, or quoting one to someone, check both.
A worked example. A Profit & Loss for one month shows income of ₹4,20,000 and expenses of ₹3,10,000, giving a profit of ₹1,10,000. Widen the range to the quarter and all three numbers change — not because anything was wrong, but because you asked a different question. Narrow it to one outlet of three and they change again.
This is the most common reason two people disagree about "the number". They are usually both right, about different periods.
What to check when a statement looks wrong¶
- Confirm the period and outlet first. More disagreements come from this than from bad data.
- Then the Trial Balance. If total debits and credits do not agree, resolve that before reading the other two — they are built on the same postings.
- Then look for the postings themselves. See Day Book, Journal and Ledger.