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Check your general ledger is complete against your trial balances

Your Scope 3 spend comes from your general ledger. If transactions are missing from the ledger you loaded, your emissions are understated and nothing else...

Written by Misha Cajic

Your Scope 3 spend comes from your general ledger. If transactions are missing from the ledger you loaded, your emissions are understated and nothing else in Avarni will tell you.

This check tells you. For every account, it compares the ledger you loaded against the movement in your trial balances.

Opening balance + ledger transactions = closing balance

An account where that holds is complete. An account where it does not is missing transactions, or has extra ones.

What you need first

Where to find the check

  1. Open your assessment.

  2. Select Chart of Accounts.

  3. In the toolbar, switch from Categorisation to Completeness Check.

Choose which two trial balances to compare

In the toolbar, set:

  • Currency

  • Opening TB

  • Closing TB

Only balances that finished importing are offered, and only those in the currency you picked.

The closing balance must be dated after the opening balance. If it is not, both fields turn red and the check does not run.

If you see Two balances in one currency are needed to tie out, you have fewer than two completed balances in that currency. Import another.

Your choice is remembered in your browser. It is not saved for your colleagues, so tell them which pair you used.

Read the columns

Column

What it shows

Opening TB Balance

The account's balance in the opening trial balance

Closing TB Balance

The account's balance in the closing trial balance

Account Balance from GL

The sum of the ledger transactions for the account between the two dates

Balance Difference

The gap between the three. Zero means the account ties out.

A Totals row at the bottom adds up every account in your current filter.

Which ledger transactions are counted

A transaction counts towards Account Balance from GL when it is:

  • dated after the opening balance date, up to and including the closing balance date, and

  • in the same currency as the two trial balances.

Transactions dated on the opening balance date itself are not counted. That day belongs to the opening balance.

What the Balance Difference tells you

A green tick means the account ties out exactly.

Any other figure means it does not. Either transactions are missing from the ledger, or extra ones were loaded. Work through the list below to find out which.

There is no tolerance. A difference of one cent shows as a difference.

An excluded account shows a dash. Its transactions were not loaded, so there is nothing to compare.

Why an account does not tie out

Work through these in order.

  1. Months are missing from the ledger extract. The ledger covers less of the year than the two trial balances. Ask finance for the full period.

  2. The dates do not line up. Your ledger extract runs to a different cut-off from your closing trial balance, or your opening balance is dated the first day of the year instead of the day before.

  3. Some ledger rows are in another currency. Only rows in the pair's currency are counted.

  4. The ledger includes opening balance journals. They are already in the opening trial balance, so they are counted twice. Remove them from the ledger file and reload it.

  5. Rows were deleted on upload. When you upload the ledger, rows with an account code error are usually deleted. If the account should have been included, those transactions never arrived. Check the account in your chart of accounts.

  6. Elimination or consolidation entries. A post-elimination trial balance will not match a pre-elimination ledger. See Upload your chart of accounts and trial balance.

Record why you accepted a difference

Some differences are expected, such as an accrual reversal your finance team already knows about. Write down why.

The Justification column is hidden in this view. Show it from the column menu, then add your note to the account. Use Review Status to mark the account Confirmed once you are satisfied.

Give the results to your auditor

Download the grid as CSV or Excel from the toolbar. The export uses the two trial balances you selected and includes every completeness column.

What this check does not do

It checks your ledger against your trial balances. It does not check your invoices or activity data against your ledger. For the other checks, see The three completeness checks, and what each one tells you.

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