Financial statements for your accountant
Trial balance, balance sheet, A/P aging and profit and loss straight from your general ledger, and report groups that run them together as one PDF or CSV.
Your accountant needs the same handful of statements every month: a trial balance, a balance sheet, an accounts payable aging and a profit and loss, often for several months side by side. Meridian builds all of them from your general ledger, so they always agree with the books, and a report group runs the set you use together and hands you one PDF or CSV to send.
Open Financial Reports. In the sidebar, expand Accounting and click Financial Reports. You need accounting access to see it. The profit and loss also needs permission to see costs, because it shows cost of goods sold and gross profit.
Trial balance. Every account with its Opening balance, Debits, Credits and ending balance as a debit or a credit. Pick a range with the quick buttons (This month, Last month, your fiscal year to date, last fiscal year) or the dates. A range stays inside one fiscal year: revenue and expense accounts start at the beginning of the year, so a range that crosses into the previous year is refused with the date your year began. The last line, Debits less credits, is 0.00 when the books balance. Tick Leave out year-end closing entries for a pre-closing trial balance. Click any account to open its ledger for the same months.
Balance sheet. Assets, liabilities and equity on any day. Equity includes Net income, fiscal year to date. Choose One per location under Columns to see where each location's tagged balances sit, plus a Company-level column for entries with no location (stock in transit between your locations lives there) and the Total. Only the total has to balance.
A/P aging. Every vendor bill open on a day, in Not yet due, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and Over 90 days past its due date, one line per vendor or every bill. The cards at the top compare the open bills with your accounts payable account in the general ledger on the same day. If they differ, the Difference card says so. Something posted to accounts payable without a bill behind it (a journal entry, or a balance carried over from your previous system), and the report shows it rather than hiding it.
Profit and loss. Revenue, cost of goods sold, gross profit, operating expenses and net income, with Months, Fiscal quarters or Fiscal years as columns and a total. Cost of goods sold is the accounts your cost postings use (set under Settings > Ledger accounts) and any account whose subtype is cost of goods; every other expense is an operating expense. Year-end closing entries are left out, so the last month of a year shows that month's results.
Download or print. Every statement has Download PDF, Export CSV and Print. The download is exactly the report on screen.
Save a report group. On Financial Reports, click New report group, name it (for example "Month-end pack"), tick the reports, choose Months or Fiscal quarters, and pick a location or all of them. Open the group, pick the first and last month, and every report runs for that range: the profit and loss gets a column per month or quarter, the balance sheet and trial balance show balances at the end of each, and the A/P aging runs as of the last day. Download PDF or Download CSV gives you the whole pack in one file. Creating, editing and deleting groups needs permission to change the books.
What happens behind the scenes
Nothing here changes your books. Each statement reads the general ledger when you open it; a closed month is read from the balances saved when it was closed, so older years stay fast. Months are your accounting periods, set in the shop's timezone when each entry posted, and quarters and years follow the fiscal year under Settings > Money controls. A report group saves only which reports to run, never the figures.
Troubleshooting
A trial balance covers one fiscal year at most, because revenue and expense restart at the beginning of each year. Start the range on or after the date in the message.
Only accounts set as cost of goods count above gross profit. Check the account's subtype on the chart of accounts, and the cost accounts under Settings > Ledger accounts.
That's expected. Bills, payments and stock in transit between your locations post to the company with no location, so one location's column rarely balances on its own. The total column does.
The open bills and the accounts payable account disagree. Click through to the account's ledger and look for entries without a bill behind them. A difference carried over from a previous system stays until your accountant posts the adjustment.
Your role can't see costs, so the profit and loss is left out of the group for you, with a note saying so.