Improving Performance Using the Balance File

By summarising transactions from the ledger or budget file, you can improve the speed with which a trial balance is produced. The Ledger Balance file contains summaries of the transactions from the ledger file. It is used by some reports to improve the speed with which the reports are produced. See 'Updating the Ledger Balances' for further information.

In Trial Balance, the ledger balance file is used only when it is appropriate to the selections made when you produce a trial balance. The balance file is used in preference to the ledger or budget file when the following conditions are met:

• A balance file has been created for the current ledger/budget file. See the 'Creating Optional Ledger Tables'.
• Trial Balance is set to select by accounting period. As the balance file does not contain transaction dates, it cannot be used if you select by transaction or entry date. The Force Generation from Ledger File allows selection by accounting period and forces the report to be generated from the ledger file.
• Trial Balance is set to include provisional transactions. As the balance file does not differentiate between provisional and permanent postings, you can only use the balance file when all of transactions are included in the report, provisional and permanent.