What changed on 3 August 2026
Two finance reports were corrected. No data was changed, added or removed. Every figure was always what it is now — the reports were displaying some of them without their sign, which hid a real problem instead of showing it.
Most schools see no difference at all. Four in five have nothing on these screens that moves.
1. A balance can now show as a negative, in red brackets
Accounts have a normal side. Money you hold — cash, bank, receivables — normally carries a debit balance. Money you owe, and the owners' capital, normally carries a credit balance.
The Balance Sheet used to display every figure as a positive number whatever its real sign. So a cash account that had paid out more than it took in — which cannot happen with real cash — was displayed as a positive asset. The report was hiding it.
Now each account is shown on its natural side. An account sitting normally looks exactly as it always did. An account that has gone the wrong way appears as (306,521) — red, in brackets.
What a red bracketed figure usually means
- Payments recorded without the matching receipts. By far the most common cause: the account has been credited more than it has been debited.
- An opening balance that was never entered, so the account started at zero instead of its real figure.
- Entries posted to the wrong account, leaving one over-credited and another over-debited.
What to do
- Click the account name on the Balance Sheet — it opens Finance › GL Inquiry for that account and period.
- Read the running balance down the page and find where it first goes negative.
- Check whether the entries around that point are complete. Usually something is missing rather than wrong.
- Post the missing entry through the normal screens. Do not adjust the figure by hand.
If your Total Assets figure has dropped: the old total was adding the value of a negative account instead of subtracting it, so it was overstated by twice that account's balance. The new total is the correct one.
2. The Trial Balance now has Debit and Credit balance columns
A trial balance has two balance columns in accounting. Ours was showing one column of unsigned figures, which meant the total debits could not be compared with the total credits — and comparing those two totals is the whole purpose of the report.
The Balance heading now spans a Debit and a Credit column, matching the Brought Forward and This Duration sections above it. Every figure is the same as before. Each one now simply sits under the side it belongs to.
3. "Debits and credits differ by …"
If the two totals do not agree, a line appears under the table saying so. This is not a fault in the report — it is the report doing its job. It means the ledger does not balance for the range you selected.
What to check, in this order
- The date range. An entry dated outside the range you chose is not included. Widen it to the start of the financial year and see whether the difference closes.
- An account with no opening balance. If an account was created part-way through the year and its opening balance was never posted, its side of the ledger is short by that amount.
- Entries posted to an account that is no longer in your Chart of Accounts. The ledger holds them but a report that lists accounts cannot show them. If the difference does not move whatever date range you pick, this is usually why — contact support and we can identify the entries for you.
- A one-sided entry from a historic data import.
Do not post a balancing entry to force the totals to agree. It hides the cause and makes it much harder to find later. Find the missing entry and post that instead.
Where to find these screens
- Finance › Trial Balance
- Finance › Balance Sheet
- Finance › GL Inquiry — the detail behind any account