Trial balances by division

Generally, the General Ledger control accounts are an accumulation of transactions that represent the entire company. In a divisionalized accounting system, the trial balances must be broken into an accumulation of transactions by division.

In order to balance active transactions to the control accounts, manual adjustments must be made in GL Transaction Entry. When you print the trial balances for these control accounts, you must request divisional totals, detail, and without an ‘as of’ date when you specify the report parameters. You can use the divisional totals to manually move the proper amount from the original control account and post it to the correct division’s control account.

For example, to split the AP Control account, you must first generate the Vendor Trial Balance Report at the company level and balance the detail to the control account. You must then generate the trial balances by division and make sure the divisions balance to the Vendor Trial Balance Report at the company level.

For example, ABC Company has balanced the trial balance and the control account. The AP control account has a credit balance of $47,850. The Vendor Trial Balance Report is generated by divisions as follows:

Div 1 Div 2 Div 3
AP Control 18,100 14,050 15,700

You must create manual GL Transaction Entry entries to move the appropriate amounts to the divisions:

DR DR
AP Control (Company) 47,850.00
AP Control Div 1 18.100.00
AP Control Div 2 14,050.00
AP Control Div 3 15,700.00

These additional balancing reports should be run to break the amounts posted to the company control account to the division's control accounts:

  • Customer Trial Balance Report
  • Product Trial Balance of Stock Inventory Report
  • Product Trial Balance of Non-Stock Inventory Report
  • Product Trial Balance of Direct Orders Report
  • GL Balance Order Entry Report
  • GL Balance Transfers Report
  • GL Balance Purchase Order Report
  • GL Balance Matching Activity Report
  • VA Work in Process Trial Balance Report

Retained earnings must also be reallocated to each division with GL Transaction Entry entries. You should review all balance sheet accounts for possible reallocation.