What a trial balance upload needs
A company on any other accounting system comes in by uploading one closing trial balance a month as a CSV file. The file needs a header row and one row per account, with the account code, account name, account type, and either debit and credit columns or one balance column. A file that does not balance is refused in full.
The columns
Use a CSV file with a header row and one row per account.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Account code | The company's own code for the account. Each code can appear only once. |
| Account name | The account's name in the company's books. |
| Type | One of asset, liability, equity, income or expense. |
| Debit and Credit, or Balance | Either a debit column and a credit column, or one balance column with each account on its normal side. |
Profit and loss figures are year to date, as they are on any closing trial balance.
One closing trial balance a month
Upload the trial balance at each month end. Finconsol works out each month's movement from the difference between one month and the next, and starts the profit and loss again at the start of the company's financial year.
Before the first month you consolidate, upload the trial balance for the month before it. Those are the opening balances. A company that joins the group part of the way through needs only the month before it joins. A month with no trial balance stops the group figures for that month.
Templates
The Trial balance uploads screen offers two templates:
- The group's chart of accounts. Codes in this file match the group chart, so there is nothing to map.
- The company's own accounts from an earlier month. Useful once the company has been uploaded before.
Upload a month
- Open Trial balance uploads and find the company and month.
- Choose Upload, or Replace for a month already loaded, and choose the file.
- Choose Check the file. Finconsol reads every line and lists any problems.
- When the check passes, load the figures.
Uploading needs setup access, so an administrator does it. Replacing a month keeps no copy of the earlier file. A closed month refuses uploads until it is reopened.
Checks on each file
Finconsol saves nothing from a file until every line passes. It refuses a file that:
- does not balance, and says by how much debits and credits differ
- has no amount column, or no account column
- has a type it cannot read
- has the same account code twice
- has an amount that is not a number
Accounts that have no line on the group chart yet are loaded, and Finconsol says so after the upload. The statements for the months they have a balance in are not shown until someone chooses their lines on Account mapping.