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Article: The Right Balance: Trial balance applications-When write-up isn't right.
- Article from:
- The Practical Accountant
- Article date:
- December 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 SourceMedia, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Many accountants think of trial balance software as a subset of write-up. After all, the ultimate product of both applications is a set of financial statements. The intent of each application, however, is quite different.
For many practices, a write-up engagement consists of capturing initial financial transactions (checks and deposits) to produce the original books of record, in addition to a set of adjusted financial statements. These may be used for other tasks, but the output is usually not carried forward into a review or audit engagement, though it may be used to prepare tax returns.
A trial balance package can accumulate a client's financial ...