Fixing an unbalanced file

An unbalanced notification means that there is a discrepancy between your ledger and Client Accounting.

There are few things that you can check to identify the issue.

• Review account mapping and account types

• Check the financial reports

• Check manually uploaded data

• Check adjustment journals

• Check the sync

Review account mapping and account types

Check whether the account mapping is correct, as this may cause the balancing issues between assets, liabilities, equity, and the income statement

• The balance sheet accounts and P&L accounts are mapped to the corresponding accounts in Client Accounting

Client Accounting applies opening balances only to balance sheet accounts (such as assets, liabilities, and equity), not to income or expense accounts. Therefore, correctly classifying accounts is essential to ensure accurate balances and proper roll-forwards.

To review if the accounts are mapped correctly

1. In the Client Accounting file, go to Accounts.

2. If an account type does not match the type in your ledger or if it is a manually uploaded file, it will be highlighted in grey in the account type column.

3. To fix the mapping and remap to the correct account, go to the Mapping and select the correct account.

Check the financial reports

• Prior year periods are closed: Confirm that all prior periods are properly closed in your ledger. This is the source of the Retained Earnings amount.

• Sync date is the same as financial year: Check whether the sync start date is the same as the start of the financial year. If these dates are different, it will result in an unbalanced file due to some data may be missing from the synchronisation. See <Editing or removing the date of synchronisation>.

• Book years and booking periods are same as the ledger: Verify that the book years and booking periods in Client Accounting match those in the ledger. Even a minor mismatch can result in certain transactions not being imported correctly, causing an unbalanced file. Client Accounting uses the booking period (not the booking date) to determine where a transaction is shown.
  If a period is shortened, the data is pushed to the next period as it is no longer considered to be a full period. Each transaction includes both a booking period and a booking date, but the booking period takes priority.

• Opening balance is correct: Check the opening balance settings in the Period tab. See <How can I deactivate the rollforward of opening balances and retained earnings? >

Check the manually uploaded data

• If you’re uploading data manually, verify the number formatting in Excel. Minor rounding or formatting issues.

• Ensure there are no blank rows or subtotal lines.

• Use a dot (.) as the thousands separator and a comma (,) as the decimal separator.

• Ensure there are no discrepancies in the source data before exporting from your accounting software.

Check the adjustments journals

• When you post an adjustment and have automatic sync enabled, make sure you’ve marked all adjustments as posted to make sure they are not duplicated.

• If your automatic sync is not enabled, post the adjustment journal to the client’s ledger manually. You don't need to mark them a posted.

Check the sync

In some cases, there may be a sync issue between your client’s ledger and Client Accounting.

• Check the error message you’re getting and check https://practice-support.myob.com/mpca/troubleshooting-sync-issues 

Still an unbalanced file?

After you’ve tried all the steps above and the file is still unbalanced, contact support and provide us with the following information.

• File name  

• File URL link

• Error message (if any)

• The unbalanced period

• Accounts impacted

  • Include the Trial Balance and transactions for the affected accounts in the first unbalanced period.