Account Ending Balances Not Matching

Stephanie St. Clair

I am working on cleaning up the books from last year, trying to match last year's YE ending balances to the auditors' ending balances. (I am new to this organization).

However, when I pull a report on the individual account, the ending balance does not match the ending balance that I see in the GL.

I have looked for, and posted, any unposted journal entry batches associated with the account.

Otherwise, I can see the journal entries look identical.

I have about 15 problematic accounts.

This organization has not hard-closed a year since 1998 and there is resistance from a certain individual to do so. Not sure if all these open years are affecting the account balances.

Has anyone doing a clean up encountered this problem? Thank you in advance!

Kevin Brazell

Open years don't technically affect an account balance, especially not fund balance / asset accounts. When you say "see in the GL" what is this for clarification on what you're using to confirm? But if you run a report for the ending balance on all but the fund balance accounts, anything else on the Balance sheet's beginning balance should match the ending balance from previous year. Also do make sure not to include NYP transactions, it's good to know if they exist, but if you're comparing the balance from the account activity tile , that only shows posted activity and any NYP would cause issues not matching.

Stephanie St. Clair

Thanks, Kevin.

When I said, "see in the GL", I'm talking about the activity tile. That ending balance for FY25 is $16,342.

When I run an account report, the ending balance for FY25 is $17,082. (I am not including NYP transactions).

As far as I can tell, all the transactions are posted and posted for correct dates within the appropriate FY.

It's a liability account.

I'm not sure what you mean by this:

"But if you run a report for the ending balance on all but the fund balance accounts, anything else on the Balance sheet's beginning balance should match the ending balance from previous year."

What are "fund balance" accounts?

Thanks for your help!

Stephanie St. Clair

Just FYI, B/S also shows EB for FY25 as $17,082.

This balance equals the auditors' number.

Should I consider this the "true" balance amount and not what I am seeing in the GL activity tile?

Patricia Nowak

Check and make sure the Actual/Encumbrance selection is correct on the activity tile. It is just left of the FY selection.

Stephanie St. Clair

Thank you, Patricia! Unfortunately, that did not do the trick. 😕

Kevin Brazell

@Stephanie St. Clair what report are you running and also take a screenshot of the criteria page

Stephanie St. Clair

General Ledger report.

Kevin Brazell

Thank you @Stephanie St. Clair . WHen you run this GL report and check the ending balance, then go to that account's activity tile , you're saying the ending balances do not agree? Also by chance, if this is a saved report, if you make it fresh, and run it with same settings, do you get a different ending balance on the report?

Stephanie St. Clair

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for getting back to me. Yes, above, is the Activity tile for Account 01-982100 with an EB for FY25 of $30,672, and below, I pulled a GL report and it shows an EB for FY25 of $3,502,158.

As you can see, the two amounts are not even close.

I've pulled the GL reports multiple times over several days, and the ending balances remain consistent.

I'm pretty much just following the report balances versus the activity tile balance.

Stephanie St. Clair

Actually, that was a bad example. I just realized that account still has an unposted JE batch. Sorry about that.

Here is the activity tile from the original account I was talking about: (There are no unposted transactions in this account).

Here is the GL report:

Thank you!

Kevin Brazell

thanks for that data. I notice on the 2nd account, the beginning balance doesn't even match at start of report vs what the activity tile shows. But the debits to credits on tile vs report do. In the case of the 2nd account the starting points are different and that's where those 2 disagree. The actual raw debits / credits totals they do. In that one's case is there something else going on in previous year?

Stephanie St. Clair

You're right. I'm not sure how I missed that. I'm looking at so many accounts, I'm getting myself confused.

I will pay more attention to that and dig into beg balances. If I still have an issue, I'll message you again.

Thanks for your patience with me.