The trial balance is a report run at the end of an accounting period, listing the ending balance in each account. The report is primarily used to ensure that the total of all debits equals the total of all credits, which means that there are no unbalanced journal entries in the accounting system that would make it impossible to generate accurate financial statements.
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So why is this important to know? We’ll most Property Managers don’t check this document after running their end of month process and what tends to happen is that money is left in their trust account at the end of month.
This can become a big deal once many end of months are processed and over time or changes in staff these funds can become “unknown” and then we have to send them to unclaimed monies. In the 500 offices I personally visited last year I found over $1million dollars in unclaimed and unknown money!
In my experience most auditors don’t pick this up and alert you so after your next end of month close be sure to check your trail balance report and get clear on who’s money your hanging on to!
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