My balance sheet doesn't balance (or my trial balance's debits and credits don't agree) — how do I find what's causing it?

Why should double-entry software never be out of balance?

The IRS's Publication 583 calls double entry self-balancing because every transaction is recorded as a debit entry in one account and a credit entry in another, and says total debits must equal total credits after the journal entries are posted to the ledger accounts. If they do not, the publication says, there is an error to find and correct.

When software records both sides of each transaction under this rule, most miskeying leaves the books wrong but balanced. Intuit does document some QuickBooks Desktop exceptions involving receivables, discounts and inventory (below), so an unequal total points to a few specific causes:

• The report is not presenting the whole ledger correctly.
• A saved transaction's sides no longer agree, through a broken link or damaged data.
• An entry reached the ledger outside the normal forms, or through an account the software handles specially.

So start with the report, then narrow by date, instead of rechecking every entry.

Is the report creating the imbalance, or is the ledger out?

Test the report before touching any data. Open a fresh standard balance sheet, not a saved or customized one, with no filters, all dates and columns by year, and run it on cash and then on accrual, with the trial balance on the same settings. Saved reports can carry a lot: Intuit's help on customizing QuickBooks Online reports says you can filter by accounts or customers, change the accounting method and adjust the number format, then save the customization. A balance sheet filtered to some accounts is not the whole ledger. Don't put a difference down to the number format; test on the fresh standard report, with cents shown.

Two display effects are documented for QuickBooks Desktop:

• Class columns. Intuit's page on transactions not supported by Balance Sheet by Class lists those that create unclassified, unbalanced or other incorrect amounts on that report, so an unbalanced class column is not by itself a ledger fault.
• A recurring display fault. Intuit's QuickBooks Desktop page on a recurring out-of-balance Balance Sheet Report says to log out and back into the file, then change the default date, for example to All with columns by year, and to troubleshoot data damage only if neither step changes the report. That page says a fix will not be immediately available.

If every year column balances on both bases, the report caused it: find the setting responsible and correct the report, not the data. If any year column is out on either basis, the ledger has a real condition, even if your usual report balances. Changing settings until some version of the report looks right is not a fix.

What does it mean when only one report, or one basis, is out?

The two reports total different things. A trial balance is the check Publication 583 describes: across the ledger accounts, income and expense accounts included, total debits must equal total credits. A balance sheet sets assets against liabilities plus equity. The SEC's Beginners' Guide to Financial Statements says a company's assets have to equal the sum of its liabilities and shareholders' equity, and that equity includes earnings or losses since inception, which is where income and expense accounts end up.

Both come from the same account balances, so compare them only on identical date, basis and filters. The reading below is reasoning from the double-entry rule, not a vendor statement; if the imbalance survives identical settings, narrow it by date.

Switching basis is itself a test. Intuit's QuickBooks Online page on cash and accrual methods says a cash report counts income or expenses only once you get a payment or pay a bill, so unpaid invoices and bills are held back. For QuickBooks Desktop, Intuit's page Fix a Balance Sheet that's out of balance says an accrual-basis imbalance calls for rebuilding the company file first, while one in cash basis only goes straight to finding the date.

How do you find the date the imbalance first appears?

Don't search the whole history at once. Intuit's QuickBooks Online page Run a Balance Sheet report calls it a cumulative report that carries a beginning balance, so once one date is out, later dates carry the difference forward, and the job is to find the first.

For QuickBooks Desktop, Intuit's fix page sets out the narrowing:

1. Run the Balance Sheet Summary over all dates, on accrual if it is out in accrual only and otherwise on cash, with columns by year.
2. Compare total assets with total liabilities and equity in each column and find the first year that is out.
3. Repeat within that year by month, then by week, then by day.
4. Run a Custom Transaction Detail report for that day on the same basis, with the Paid Amount column. Intuit says its ending balance should equal the amount out of balance, and to look for the transactions that add up to it.

For QuickBooks Online, the same Run a Balance Sheet report page says to select each account to see its transactions and to narrow the date range from year to date, month by month, until you reach the day the balance sheet goes off. If it was already out when this year began, find the first year out, as in the example below, then narrow by month; the page says the report can show year-over-year columns.

What does a narrowing look like?

Here is a retailer whose balance sheet is out on accrual only and still out after a rebuild, run on accrual, all dates, columns by year:

The difference first appears in 2025 and stays the same, so one cause is worth 387.50. By month, May 2025 balances and June is out by 387.50. By week, the week starting 15 June is the first one out; by day, 17 June. The detail report for 17 June shows a Paid Amount ending balance of 387.50, and one entry for that amount, a journal entry linked to a credit memo, is the one to examine. If a later column had shown 512.50 instead, a second cause worth 125.00 would start there, to be narrowed separately.

What should you look for on that date?

The entries on that day fall into a few classes:

• Entries whose sides disagree. On the QuickBooks Desktop detail report these are the transactions whose Paid Amount entries add up to the difference; Intuit's fix page says re-dating them re-links the transactions and can repair them.
• Entries against specially handled accounts. Intuit's advanced troubleshooting page lists an inventory return and discount on an invoice, a discount entered at the customer level and applied at the job level, a journal entry linked to a credit memo, and unconventional inventory transactions, including those that drive quantity on hand negative.
• Damaged data. If the detail report does not show the transactions, Intuit's advanced page has you run customer, vendor and journal reports and a report for other transactions, one at a time. If none finds them, the page says you may have data damage the usual troubleshooting cannot fix; its specific fixes are rare, may be complex and need a backup first, so this is where we recommend stopping.
• Entries made outside the normal forms. Check where each entry came from: a journal entry posted straight to receivables, payables or inventory, an imported batch or an entry written by a connected app deserves a closer look.

For a type Intuit's advanced page lists, use the fix it gives; for a journal entry linked to a credit memo, edit the journal entry, move the A/R account to the source line, usually the first, save, and confirm it is still linked.

Intuit's fix page gives the Desktop repair for other entries found this way: note their dates, edit the date on each to a day 20 years in the future and save; if you found the right transactions, the Paid Amount column will now be zero; then date them back to their original date. If that does not fix it, the fix page says to delete and reenter them, and the advanced page says a transaction that appears damaged can be deleted and recreated. Before deleting any entry, save its full detail, including what it is applied or linked to, so the re-entry matches. Preserve a copy first, and read the section on reported periods before editing one.

What do the platform's own tools check, and how do you read them?

Intuit documents these QuickBooks Desktop tools; on any other program, rely only on utilities its own documentation describes:

• Verify Data. Intuit's page Verify and rebuild data in QuickBooks Desktop says the verify tool identifies common issues in your company file, while the rebuild tool repairs data integrity. In QuickBooks Desktop for Windows, close all windows, then choose File, Utilities, Verify Data; a damaged file reports that your data has lost integrity.
• Rebuild Data. The same page says a backup is required before you can rebuild, and to run Verify Data again afterwards to check for additional damage. If you use QuickBooks Desktop Assisted Payroll, the page says to contact Intuit before you rebuild. Intuit's page Resolve potential data issues in QuickBooks Desktop says repeated rebuilds are working as long as the error messages are changing without looping.
• The log. Intuit's page Find QBWin.log or QuickBooks.log files says QuickBooks Desktop logs program messages and errors, including information from Verify, Rebuild and Condense Data, and for Windows suggests searching QBWin.log for Begin Verify to find the latest run; on Mac the log is QuickBooks.log. The page notes that an "IsQBInUseLockFilePresentAndLocked...LCK can't be found. Error = 2" entry is not a sign of data damage. The verify page says to search for any error message on the QuickBooks Desktop support site.
• File Doctor. Intuit's page Fix data damage on QuickBooks Desktop company file offers QuickBooks File Doctor if data issues remain after rebuilding, and Intuit's data-issues page says to download a new version each time you use it.

QuickBooks Desktop for Mac has its own verify and rebuild page. A clean Verify means the file passed a check for common issues, not that the balance sheet is right, so keep narrowing even when Verify finds nothing. For QuickBooks Online, the troubleshooting on Intuit's Run a Balance Sheet report page is the account drill-down and date narrowing above.

When should you stop repairing, and what must you preserve first?

Preserve before any change. Intuit's Desktop fix page says to make a backup before you continue, since you might have to edit transactions, and to ask your bookkeeper or accountant for help before you continue. Intuit's backup page says backup company files save everything currently in your company file but not your payroll forms, so if you run payroll in QuickBooks Desktop, save those separately before any repair. The verify page says not to replace another backup file. Keep the damaged file too: Intuit's restore page warns that opening a backup in the same folder as your existing company file may overwrite your data, and suggests renaming one of them so the names are unique.

Stop repairing it yourself and go to the vendor when any of these happens:

• Verify still finds damage after repeated rebuilds, or the error messages loop instead of changing.
• The log names an error the support site does not explain; Intuit's verify page says you can then restore a recent backup.
• Data issues remain after the first rebuild and that rebuild took 2+ hours; Intuit's data-damage page says to contact support rather than rebuild again.
• After rebuilding again and running File Doctor, one of the errors Intuit's data-issues page lists as unrecoverable (such as -6150 or "Database disk image is malformed") still appears; the page says you then need to restore an older file or create a new one.
• Neither the detail report nor the four reports on Intuit's advanced page find the transactions, and the integrity check is clean.

From then on, stop entering and editing transactions in the file: if recovery ends with an older copy or a new file, everything entered after that copy has to be entered again.

What if the file is hosted or shared?

On a shared network, Intuit's backup page has you switch to single-user mode from the File menu before backing up, so agree a time for the switch with everyone else who uses the file. If a hosting provider runs QuickBooks Desktop for you, ask the provider before any repair how a copy of the current file is taken and kept, whether you can run QuickBooks's own backup in your hosted session, and whether it must be involved in any rebuild or restore.

In QuickBooks Online, Intuit's export page lets you export reports and lists as Excel files, saving information from posting transactions; it describes no way to restore the books from them, so treat the export as a record for reference and re-entry, not a restorable copy. Take it before anything changes, record each entry's full detail before editing it, and ask Intuit's support how the data can be protected before any repair beyond correcting your own entries.

What if the figures were already given to a lender, an accountant or a tax filing?

The diagnosis is the same, but the correction can change figures the lender, accountant or return already relied on. Preserve a copy, finish diagnosing, and decide where the correction belongs before editing, re-dating or deleting anything in that period; correcting an error in a closed, reported period is a separate question.

In what order should you work through the checks?

Work from cheapest to most invasive, and stop at the first step that settles it:

How do you prove the ledger really balances now?

Close the work with these checks:

• Rerun the report exactly as it was when you found the problem, then the plain report on both bases with all dates by year. Every column must show total assets equal to total liabilities and equity, not only the latest.
• Run the trial balance on the same date and basis and confirm total debits equal total credits.
• In QuickBooks Desktop, run Verify Data again, as Intuit's verify page directs after a rebuild.
• Confirm nothing was posted just to make the totals agree. A balancing entry hides the defect while leaving it in the data, and becomes a balance nobody can support later.

Checking that the balance sheet balances at each month-end keeps the next search to one month.