Investigating an out-of-balance trial balance
An out-of-balance trial balance is unusual in Ustawi precisely because postings are generated as balanced pairs — so a difference is a specific thing to find, not general noise. This is a structured checklist for tracing the discrepancy rather than guessing at it.
Start with the size of the difference
Note the exact gap between the debit and credit totals — for example, debits 12,450,000, credits 12,438,500, a difference of 11,500. The size and shape of the difference often points straight at the cause before you open a single journal.
The checklist
- 1Check the period and date rangeConfirm you are reading the trial balance for the period you think you are, and that the range has not cut a journal in half at its boundary.
- 2Look for a manual entrySystem postings balance by construction, so a manual journal entry is the most likely single-sided or mistyped source. Review recent manual entries first.
- 3Match the difference to a known amountSee whether the gap equals a specific transaction — a disbursement, a premium, a provision — which localises the journal to inspect.
- 4Trace suspect journals to their eventBecause app-event postings carry their source, follow a suspect line back to the loan action that created it and confirm both legs posted.
You cannot edit a closed period in place. A correction that must land there goes through the controlled reopen, is made, and the period is re-closed — see “How period close and reopen works.”
Once you have found and corrected the entry, re-run the trial balance and confirm the two totals agree before relying on any report drawn from the period.