8. Preparing key financial reports

After you have completed the first seven steps in the closing checklist, you are ready to prepare financial statements. There are three primary financial statements you will need to prepare:

• The trial balance
• The balance sheet
• The income statement (profit and loss report)

In Chapter 11, Business Overview Reports, you learned what the balance sheet and income statement reports are, how to interpret the data, and how to generate these reports in QuickBooks. Your accountant, or certified public accountant (CPA), will also request a trial balance report. A trial balance report lists all of the debits and credits recorded in QuickBooks for the period. If everything has been recorded properly, debits will always equal credits on this report.

Follow these steps to run a trial balance report in QuickBooks:

1. Navigate to Reports, as indicated in Figure 15.12:

Figure 15.12: Clicking Reports to navigate...