10 Steps to a Digital Practice in the Cloud, 2nd Edition

8

Trial Balance Working Paper Software

We made a few assumptions when writing this book, and one of them is that you already have your tax preparation software, so we do not need to spend time discussing it here. In a certain sense, we made the same assumption regarding trial balance software. However, we wanted to be sure to cover the niche category of trial balance work paper software that is used to manage the working paper files related to trial balance based engagements, that is, compilations, reviews, audits, and entity tax returns. There is not really a clearly defined name for this category of software, so we are going to use the term trial balance working paper software. We are covering this topic on the heels of the document management system (DMS) software discussion because you can make a credible argument that this is a form of document management software.

We will begin by explaining the nature of trial balance working paper software. The primary function is to serve as a trial balance software application with direct links to all the supporting digital working paper files, as well as to link directly into a financial statement reporting application and to transfer the trial balance data directly into the tax software. This application can be one of the most challenging to implement successfully because it requires you to redesign your workflows to be compatible with ...