First Class Difference Between General Ledger And Trial Balance
In short a ledger is an account wise summary of all monetary transactions whereas a trial balance is the debit and credit balance of such ledger accounts.
Difference between general ledger and trial balance. While the trial balance shows a baseline of where money is coming and going the general ledger gives the whole picture. The trial balance may not indicate that something is wrong with an account. A ledger is a summarized form of all the journal entries while the trial balance is a summarized form of all ledger accounts.
A ledger general ledger is the complete collection of all the accounts and transactions of a company. Each step of this process involves summarizing consolidating and presenting. The primary difference between general ledger and trial balance is that general ledger prepared by the company is the set of the different master accounts in which the detailed transactions of the business are present having all the accounts whereas the trial balance of the company has only the ending balance present in those accounts of the company.
A ledger is prepared in a T format whereas a Trial Balance is prepared in a columnar format. Download Template Fill in the Blanks Job Done. The debit balance amounts are in one column and the credit balance amounts are in the adjacent column.
Thus the general ledger may be several hundred pages long while the trial balance covers only a few pages. Traditionally a ledger was prepared in a physical book with a separate page for each account and a trial balance was derived from these accounts. Ad Download Our Trial Balance All 2000 Essential Business and Legal Templates.
Download Template Fill in the Blanks Job Done. The trial balances main purpose is to ensure that the debit and credits balance. The chart of accounts is a listing of the titles and numbers of all the accounts in the ledger.
A well written TB may have at least three colu. Usually accounts with zero balances are not listed If the totals of the two columns are equal accountants are comforted in knowing that the general ledger has its debits equal to credits. The general ledgers main purpose is to summarize all financial transactions during a fiscal period.