Trial Balance Report – part private part business expenses
Some expenses such as electricity, vehicle repairs or telephone can be part private, part business expenses? The percentage of GST that is claimable (business portion) is entered into the category setup window. Whenever a category which is part private, part business is used, Phoenix will automatically allocate the personal portion of the amount paid to the G15 code on the BAS form. If a trial balance is produced exclusive of GST, you will see an entry under this category for the personal portions or the "unclaimed GST".
Trial Balance not balancing
Occasionally a trial balance doesn't balance. This can occur when a trial balance is generated inclusive of GST, the report is fine and the amounts balance, but the same report printed exclusive of GST doesn’t balance. This will only happen if the following 3 areas are not in the current period:
1.reconciliation of all reconciled accounts.
2.ageing of all customers and suppliers.
3.finalising of GST return.
Invoice Only GST Control Figures
The invoice only GST control figures on a trial balance are the collective GST figures from all Customer and Supplier Invoices. These figures will only appear when Phoenix is set-up to track GST on a cash basis whilst using customer and supplier accounts.
The figure in the debit column will be the total of the GST debit transactions (supplier invoices plus Returns to any customer invoices).
The figure in the credit column will be the total GST credit transactions (customer invoices plus Returns to any supplier invoices).
If you run a GST inclusive category review using only customer and supplier accounts you will see that the total GST credits less GST payable (at the end of the report) equals the difference between the invoice only GST control debit and credit figures.
To manually calculate the invoice only GST figures, run a GST inclusive category review on both customers and suppliers (excluding customer and supplier payment categories) and manually add the GST debits and credits.
See also Invoice Only GST explained
GST Payments / Credits figures
The GST payments / credits debit figure is the total GST collected in the report period. The GST payments / credits credit figure is the total GST paid in the report period. These two figures will not equal.
The GST control account figure is the total movement in the GST control a/c for the report period.
To manually calculate this figure, take the GST payments / credits credit figure from the GST payments / credits debit figure and add the Returns to GST refunds figure.
To manually calculate the GST Control account figure of $1612.87 in the example below
$20202.22 - $20200.67 = $1.55 + $1611.32 = $1612.87
GST Control Account closing balance
The GST control account closing balance at the bottom of the trial balance should match the GST Return closing balance as shown on-screen (under Tasks, GST Return) for the same period. These figures should match regardless of whether GST is being tracked on cash or accrual basis.
If these two closing balance figures do not match it indicates that there are one or more transactions in the GST control account that have not been presented in that period (e.g. a March transaction was presented in the April-May return). Total the GST value of the unpresented transactions to equal the difference between the trial balance closing balance and the GST Return closing balance.
The reason for this is that the reports in Reports generate figures based on when transactions are entered, not when they’re cleared.
No Livestock or Commodity Accounts in the Trial Balance
In Phoenix the Reconciled, Customer and Supplier, Asset and Liability accounts and the Income and Expense categories all form part of the double entry accounting system. Livestock and Commodity accounts however allow the user to enter transactions like Natural increase and Deaths that are not double entry transactions i.e. a number of animals can be added or removed from the Livestock account with no corresponding ledger account entry. This means that we cannot include those accounts into the trial balance process.
