Posting data to the ledgers is followed by listing the balances of all the accounts and calculating whether the sum of all the debit balances agrees with the sum of all the credit balances (because every transaction has been listed once as a debit and once as a credit). This determination is called a trial balance. This procedure and those that follow it take place at the end of the fiscal period. Once the trial balance has been prepared successfully, the bookkeeping portion of the accounting cycle has ended.
