There are two Trial Balance options in Xero. Either will work, however, in the new style make sure that the option "Group by Account Type" is selected so that accounts are mapped into the correct section.
There is no need to edit the Xero TB prior to import. Just import the raw Excel TB, however, now that we now allow up to three prior periods to be imported the Xero export may be used to extract these, the headings should be changed from specific dates to "prior 2" and "prior 3" to match our standard import template.
This is the "new" style:
This is the "old" style:
Step 1 - From Xero TB use "Export", "Excel" to create a TB like this:
New style:
Old style:
Step 2 - Go to the Audit Assistant Trial Balance page and select "Upload Trail Balance":
Step 3 - Select "Choose file" button:
Step 4 - Browse to where you have saved the Xero TB file, select the file and click "Open", then in AA click "Add":
Step 5 - Drag and drop any accounts that are out of place, (Xero puts Tax under current liabilities (so it defaults to T section), and Intangibles as Fixed Assets (so it defaults to N section). Use shift and click to select multiple codes to drop and drop into the correct section.)
From here...
....to here:
All done!
For subsequent years just import the new year TB and if there have been no changes to account codes or names everything should just match up with the prior year and work seamlessly.
Note - subsequent year with new style Xero TB import tips
There is a quirk with Xero trial balances due to their limitation with categorising items like salaries and wages. These will be added to the expenditure section by default. So the user will normally manually drag and drop this into the payroll section. However in the subsequent year the new wages and salaries will be put into the expenditure section again - meaning that there is a duplicated account. Work-arounds are as follows:
- Clearing and reloading the TB for both years. The downside is potentially losing any risks you have created, and prior years beyond the first.
- A better work-around is to remove the headings from the second year import TB, so that the software would be forced to match on account numbers and names - a bit like having no 'section' column in a non-Xero import template.
- The other option is just to manually edit the payroll line in the TB so that the two rows are combined, then delete the duplicate. If there is just one payroll line this is fairly easy to do and so is probably the most efficient way to handle this.