Trial Balance and Balance List in SAP Business One: What the Versino Financial Suite Does Differently – and Why It's Noticed by Tax Advisors

The trial balance is one of the oldest accounting reports. Every accounting program has it, and SAP Business One naturally does too.

What one expects less: that a standard report, which at first glance does the same as its predecessor, becomes a recurring reconciliation topic with the tax advisor in practice. Versino Financial Suite therefore developed its own version of this report — and the difference can be pinpointed to a single column.

What is a trial balance — and when do you need one?

The Trial Balance (often shortened to TB) is the condensed overview of all accounts of a company for a specific period. For each account, it shows the opening balance, the movements during the selected month (debit and credit), the cumulative movements since the beginning of the year, and the resulting closing balance.

Anyone working in accounting will know this report from the month-end closing. It's the first audit tool: if the sum of all debit entries matches the sum of all credit entries, the accounts balance arithmetically – a simple but indispensable plausibility check before proceeding with the closing. In the annual financial statements, printing the final trial balance is a mandatory step on the checklist; it forms the basis for the balance sheet and profit and loss statement and is considered their precursor.

So much for the ideal world. The problem arises when SAP Business One and the tax advisor don't speak the same language.

Why tax advisors and SAP Business One often misunderstand each other at the turn of the year - and how to solve it

Anyone working with SAP Business One and handing over their data to a German tax advisor will be familiar with the phenomenon: the year-end is approaching, and suddenly there are discussions about the so-called trial balance (SuSa). The tax advisor complains about „opening balance values“ on accounts where they absolutely shouldn't be – namely, on revenue and expense accounts.

The problem: While SAP technically assigns an opening balance for the new year to revenue and expense accounts, the ironclad rule in the German DATEV world is: profit and loss accounts start absolutely clean at zero on January 1st. No leftover entries, no opening balances.

When these two logics clash, it leads to error messages and extensive manual correction work during export.

The solution: Instead of laboriously post-processing standard reports in Excel, the Versino Financial Suite this system conflict from the outset. Their trial balance is structured to eliminate the unwanted opening balance (EB) values on the expense and revenue accounts. The result: a clean data export, a happy tax advisor, and a stress-free year-end for the accounting department.

The SAP Business One Standard Chart of Accounts: What it shows – and where it differs from the DATEV format

SAP Business One provides a complete trial balance under Financials > Reports. The report covers all booked accounts – balance sheet accounts (assets, liabilities) as well as profit and loss accounts (expenses, revenue). Opening balances, period movements, closing balances: everything is there, everything is traceable.

The critical point lies with the opening balance sheet values (EB values) on the expense and revenue accounts. SAP Business One outputs opening balance sheet values for all accounts in the standard report – including P&L accounts – even if no year-end closing has been carried out.

The problem: In DATEV and similar German accounting systems, no opening balances are expected for accounts in the revenue and expense areas. The reason is clear from an accounting perspective – profit and loss accounts are reset to zero at the beginning of the year, and an opening balance on a revenue account makes no accounting sense. DATEV's logic therefore automatically suppresses these values.

The result: Whoever, as an SAP B1 user, hands over a standard SuSa to their tax firm provides a document that the tax advisor cannot immediately reconcile with their DATEV evaluation. This often results in a query cycle that nobody needs.

The „Home Effect“ for Accountants: Why Column Layout is Key to Efficiency

Anyone who has ever tried to explain to an English car driver why we drive on the right side of the road knows: different countries, different customs. It's a similar situation with SAP Business One in its standard configuration and the German tax system. The data in the SAP standard is correct, but it is often sorted in an „international“ way. For German tax advisors and financial auditors, this feels like left-handed tools.

the Versino Financial Suite builds a bridge here and uses a strict DATEV-aligned 6-column schema.

This diagram tells the story of each account from left to right: Where did we start? (Opening balance), what happened in the current period? (Debit/Credit), what has accumulated year-to-date? (Accumulated Debit/Credit) and where do we stand today? (Closing balance).

The result in practice: When the auditor or tax advisor opens this list, they see precisely the grid they know inside out. There are no „translation errors,“ no confused follow-up questions, and the auditing process runs many times faster and more smoothly. Data quality isn't just about what's inside – it's also about how readable it is for the person who has to check it.

The Versino Financial Suite Trial Balance: Three differences that count in a tax advisor discussion

The Versino Financial Suite Trial Balance is explicitly positioned as a „replacement for the standard format in Business One“. What this means in practice:

Firstly: No EBT values on expense and revenue accounts.

This is the core point. The VFS-SuSa takes into account the fact that in DATEV and similar systems, opening balance values are not expected for revenue and expense accounts at the beginning of the financial year. This adjustment noticeably reduces the reconciliation effort with the tax consultancy. Or, to put it more directly: The standard SuSa unnecessarily and expensively complicates the dialogue with the tax and business consultancy.

Secondly: DATEV-style column layout.

The VFS-SuSa follows a 6-column format, based on the DATEV structure: opening balance — period debit / period credit — cumulative debit / cumulative credit — cumulative closing balance. This layout is immediately recognisable to external auditors and tax advisors. The cumulative balance is calculated as the opening balance plus or minus the cumulative movements from the beginning of the year up to the reporting date.

Third: Account class breakdown with sub-totals.

The report begins with account class 0 and lists the classes in ascending order with a subtotal after each class and a grand total at the end of the report. This makes it easier to verify and is a familiar structure for anyone who knows a DATEV analysis.

This is how to access the SuSa — and what makes the difference in daily work

Those who have installed the Versino Financial Suite will find the report under Finance > Financial Reports > Financial Suite Reports > Trial Balance.

The parameter window has been deliberately kept simple: there is a single mandatory input – the cut-off date, for example, 31.12.2024. The report automatically determines the financial year start date. Those who wish can also choose between booking date and document date as the date basis.

This is a noticeable gain in comfort compared to the B1 standard dialog, which offers several filter fields – account range, booking period, account classes, and more. For the typical use case „monthly cumulative balance on a specific date,“ this filter dialog is simply more than you need.

The output is provided as a print preview via the standard report generator and can subsequently be output as a PDF or Excel file, or printed.

For users operating the Versino Financial Suite from Release 12.2024 / 03.2025: The SuSa is also available there as an interactive screen evaluation directly in the Financial Cockpit available — an additional access point which saves the detour via the reports menu path. The preview window can be moved to a second monitor, allowing for parallel data validation in SAP Business One — a function that SAP standard reports lack in preview.

Who is the VFS-SuSa worth it for — and when is the standard SAP B1 sufficient?

Those who handle their year-end accounts entirely in-house and do not exchange data with a tax firm using DATEV will find no significant difference between Standard SuSa and VFS SuSa in their work results. The B1 standard provides the same basic data.

However, as soon as a business or tax consultancy firm comes into play that uses DATEV – and this is the norm for German SMEs – the VFS-SuSa is the more conclusive tool. It provides a document that the tax advisor can file without any conversion effort. This is no small matter, considering that this reconciliation takes place once or twice a year and the query cycles for unusual EB values in DATEV on revenue accounts can add up.

Be that as it may: a report that silently solves a well-known voting problem deserves to be known.