The IBIS Trial Balance provides a double-entry ledger of all financial transactions, simplifying reconciliation with your accounting system. It reduces double entries, speeds up settlement, and gives a clear snapshot of revenue, liabilities, and tax.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Quick start overview
- Overview
- Getting started
- Understanding the trial balance report
- Example transaction types in the trial balance
Quick start overview
Key benefits:
- Automatic capture of POS, booking, and retail revenue
- Forward booking and gift voucher liability tracking
- Daily sales export to your finance system
- Reduced manual reconciliation
Three steps to get started:
- Configure IBIS: revenue codes, payment types, invoice groups.
- Configure your finance system: create accounts for sales, liabilities, and clearing accounts.
- Choose a start date: first of a month is recommended to simplify ledger setup.
Overview
What is a trial balance?
A Trial Balance is a snapshot of your ledger accounts on a particular date.
Debits: Assets and Expenses
Credits: Liabilities, Capital, Income
If total debits = total credits → mathematically balanced.
⚠️ Note: A balanced trial balance does not guarantee all transactions are correct—misclassified or missing transactions may still exist. See accounting errors.
How IBIS handles revenue and liabilities
| Liability Type | Description | Report in IBIS |
|---|---|---|
| Forward bookings | Income received before travel | Reservation Liability Report |
| Gift voucher | Unredeemed vouchers | Gift Voucher Liability Report |
| Tax liability | Taxes collected from sales | Tax Report |
| Unbalanced sales | Bookings traveled but unpaid | Unbalanced Transactions Report |
Revenue recognition
| Type | Revenue date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Retail sales | Date of purchase | Credited to specified revenue/GL code |
| Reservation sales | Travel date | Revenue moved from Income in Advance → Revenue |
| Ticketing sales | Date of sale | Revenue recognized immediately |
Daily Export: Sales exported as .csv, broken down by finance system accounts.
Debtors: Posted to an 'IBIS Debtors Clearing Account' → reconciled as invoices are created.
Getting started
Contact IBIS to enable Trial balance features (reporting, daily export, batch invoicing).
Set up configuration (approx. 2 hours of service for exports).
Provide IBIS with:
Your accounting system
Revenue codes, tracking, department codes used to track item sales, discounts, commission, cost of sales.
Revenue recognition preferences (forward bookings, commissions)
- Advise us if you do not recognise forward bookings (and associated tax) as income until the date of travel. We will need to modify the default liability calculation settings if you recognise all revenue on the date of sale in this instance.
- If you are an activity operator, do you recognise commission as a taxable expense on your GST return?
- Yes - then gross sales (i.e. inclusive of commission amounts) will be reported as 'Sales' in your GST return, with commission reported as an expense.
- No - then net sales (i.e. after the commission is deducted) will be reported as 'Sales' in the GST return, with the commission not included as an expense.
The system will calculate a tax credit on commission for agents who have a tax number specified against their accounts in IBIS.
Configuration required in your IBIS system
- All of the items you sell through IBIS will need to be configured with the correct revenue codes (from your finance system). IBIS technicians can assist with the initial set-up if required, but your team will need to maintain this as new things are added. Learn how to set up revenue codes.
- To make it easy to reconcile money coming into your bank accounts, payment types set up in IBIS should be grouped in the same format they are received in your daily banking. You can free type your preferred payment group names into the Payment type screen where they will be saved for future use (e.g. EFTPOS, Amex, Cash, Windcave, etc).
- Accounts in IBIS should have an invoice group allocated in the Accounts screen to make it easy to run batch invoicing. You can free type your preferred group names into the invoice group field where they will be saved for future use (e.g. weekly, monthly, etc).
- Accounts in IBIS should all have the tax-registered setting enabled.
- If you will calculate a tax credit on commission for agents, ensure all agent accounts have their tax number specified against their account in IBIS.
- IBIS Technicians will create and add a daily sales export file for you in the Export screen. You will use this to transfer sales details into your finance system.
Configuration required in your finance system
- You will need to create the following accounts in your finance system to allow the correct export files to occur:
Sale accounts These will depend on the way you want to break down sales in your accounting system. You may have a sales account per department or product type. All of these will need to be configured to match IBIS. E.g. if you want your cafe sales to appear in a particular account, all items sold in the cafe will need to be associated with that specific sales account. Gift voucher liability account This will hold all revenue for gift vouchers until they are redeemed or written off. Income in advance liability account This will hold all revenue received in advance of the travel date. Once the guest travels, it will be reversed out and transferred to the correct revenue code in your finance system. IBIS debtors clearing account Allows you to reconcile your debtor payments as you receive them. Unbalanced transactions Holds the revenue for all bookings that have travelled but the booking has not been settled, i.e. the payment has not been applied, and bookings that have been cancelled and a refund has not been applied yet.
If you use Xero, ensure all your contact names in Xero match the names in the IBIS Accounts screen. This includes capital letters, spaces etc. If they are not the exact same a duplicate contact will be created in Xero when you import invoices.
Decide on a start date for using the Trial Balance reporting
You will then need to decide on a clear start date for using the Trial Balance report. We recommend the first of the calendar month.
- All data before this date will be removed from the ledger.
- The ledger will then record all bookings forward of this date as income in advance. This will equal the amount in the reservation liability report as of this date.
- Forward bookings that were prepaid by debtors will show a debtor asset for today.
- The gift voucher account will only record movement in liability with an opening balance of 0 on the Start date.
Before you begin importing daily sales/invoices from IBIS, ensure you perform the following checks:
- Check the balance of your forward revenue liability account in your finance system. This amount should match the Reservation liability report in IBIS once the ledger is enabled.
- Check the balance of your gift voucher liability account in your finance system. This amount should match the Gift voucher liability report in IBIS.
Booking POS records will show a large imbalance for that date because while we have registered a liability or a sale, there is no cash asset to balance the transaction (since cash was received prior to today).
Understanding the trial balance report
You can find the Trial balance report under the Accounts & contacts menu, or directly from IBIS Online under Reports > Finance.
The report groups transactions into categories according to the financial account type. E.g. assets, liabilities and profit & loss. Within each category, there are multiple transaction types depending on the transaction. E.g. Income in advance, Cash, Debtor, Booking sale etc as described below:
Category | Transaction | Description | Reconciliation with IBIS Reports |
Asset | Cash | Records all point-of-sale payments except transactions that have been charged to an account. | Point of sale payments report excluding all bookings posted to invoice. Items charged to an account show under 'Account' (IBIS Online > Reports > Finance > Payments) |
| Booking debtor | Records reservations that have been posted to invoice on Agent all accounts, and the commission value on a Deposit account booking (off-set by the Booking creditor). | ||
| Ticketing debtor | Records the commission value retained by the seller of a ticket. | ||
| Ticketing referral debtor | Records the commission value owed to the seller by the operator (no money has been transacted by the seller in this instance). | ||
Debtor | Records all point-of-sale transactions that have been charged to an account. | ||
Liability | Booking creditor | Records all commission owed to the Agent on reservations (off-set by the amount billed in Booking debtor). | |
| Booking referral creditor | Records all commission owed to a referral agent on reservations. | ||
| Ticketing creditor | Records the gross value owed to the operator on a ticket sale. (Less ticketing debtor i.e. commission earned, shows payable amount). | Ticket sales report - select the date range and operator account. | |
Income in advance | Records reservations that have been booked for a future date and reservations that have travelled today but were paid for before today.
| Reservation liability report - select the date range that you are looking to see the movement between. | |
Gift voucher | Records transactions concerning the purchase and redemption of gift vouchers. There is no tax on gift voucher movements.
| Sales report filtered for item type ‘gift voucher’ OR; Gift voucher sales and Gift vouchers redeemed report. IBIS Online > Reports > Sales > Sales or Gift Voucher sales or Gift Vouchers Redeemed | |
Tax | Records the tax component of sales of retail, reservations and the commission portion of tickets. |
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Profit & Loss | Booking sale | Records all reservation sales. If a reservation was prepaid, it will be reversed out of income in advance and put into sales. If a reservation is paid for or posted to invoice on the day of travel, it goes directly into sales.
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Commission expense | Records the expense side of any commission owed on reservations. In general, it matches the creditor value on any given day, unless reservations with commission have been invoiced in advance. |
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Item sale | Records all sales of retail items, including stock, non-stock, admission tickets and credit card surcharges. Excludes gift vouchers and reservations. | Sales report - exclude item types Gift vouchers and Reservations. IBIS Online > Reports > Sales > Sales | |
| Cost of sale expense | Records all costs that have been posted on this date. Managed costs are recorded on posting date, not on the travel date. The associated liability sits in Booking creditor. | ||
Ticket commission | Records the commission (revenue) value earned for ticket sales including tax.
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Tax | Records the tax on the sale of retail, reservations and commission portion of tickets. This amount should always match the liability tax account.
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System | Booking POS | This account should generally balance to $0 – one side is created from the Point of Sale item record for the reservation, and the other side is from the POS settlement record on the reservation. |
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Unbalanced | This records any reservations or point-of-sale transactions that do not balance to $0. E.g. a reservation that is past its travel date but has no settlement record will show here. | The Unbalanced transactions report should be checked daily and all bookings posted to invoice. |
Example transaction types in the trial balance
See below the expected transaction lines in your trial balance for each sale type. You can filter transactions to understand the movement of revenue by selecting the booking number, and the POS transaction number, you must select 'Show blanks' in these filters too as not all transactions have both a Book # and POS #.
Reservation transactions
| Transaction type | Transaction type scenarios & how to filter your report view |
|---|---|
| Direct reservation, purchased on the date of travel | Cash is receipted and revenue is recognised on the same day. To filter Trial Balance, select the Book # and 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #.
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| Direct reservation, purchased in advance. | Cash is receipted and the income is moved into the Income in advance account until the booked date at which point the income is reversed out of the income in advance account and the revenue is recognised. To filter the Trial Balance, select the Book # and 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #. Update the date range to include the date of the sale, to the date of travel to show all transactions.   |
Agent all reservation, posted to invoice on the date of travel. | The debtor line represents the full booking value owed by the agent, less the booking creditor which represents the commission value owed to the agent. The revenue is recognised in full, less the commission expense. To filter the Trial Balance, select the Book # and 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with 'Show blanks' within POS # (as this is a debtor booking, there is no associated POS transaction).
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| Deposit agent reservation, deposit paid in full on the date of travel. | Cash is receipted for the booking value less the deposit, the debtor line represents the booking value owed by the agent, less the booking creditor which represents the commission value owed to the agent. On a deposit booking, the booking debtor and booking creditor should equal zero as the agent has taken the deposit already, leaving $0 owed/payable. The revenue is recognised in full, less the commission expense. To filter the Trial Balance, select the Book # and 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #.
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Referral agent reservation, paid in full on the date of travel. | Cash is receipted for the full booking value, the booking referral creditor represents the commission value owed to the agent. On a referral booking, there is no money owed by a booking debtor as the agent has not taken any cash. The revenue is recognised in full, less the commission expense. To filter the Trial Balance, select the Book # and 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #.
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| Combo Reservation, paid by at guest at POS on date of travel. | Cash is receipted for the full booking value and paid for by the guest. |
| Combo Reservation, invoiced to an agent on date of travel. |
Package reservations and other supplier (3rd party) transactions
Transaction lines for combos you have with third party operators
Transaction type | Transaction type scenarios & how to filter your report view |
| Package with other supplier products booked and paid in advance, no commission made. Ensure you add all the booking numbers related to the package to get all of the ledger lines posted for this package. You will need to include the original payment date to include the ticketing creditor amount. | Cash is receipted for the full booking value, the income in advance is the operator liability and ticketing creditor represents the amount to be paid to the third party operator. On the date of travel the revenue is triggered for the operator. |
| Package with other supplier product that is booked and paid in advance, with commission. |  |
| Booking for other supplier product |  |
Reservation refund transactions
Transaction lines for the different scenarios when a refund is completed.
| Transaction type | Transaction type scenarios & how to filter your report view |
Booking made in advance with no payment. Cancelled on the date of travel and refund processed. | The revenue is triggered on the date of travel, debited from income in advance and crediting revenue. Once the booking is cancelled the revenue is reversed and balanced with the refund. |
Booking made in advance no payment. Cancelled on the date of travel before the revenue has been triggered and refund has not been processed. |  |
Booking made in advance with payment and cancelled before the date of travel. The refund has not yet been processed:
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Booking made & paid in advance, cancelled before the date of travel and the refund has been processed. |  |
Booking made in advance with payment and cancelled on the day of travel and the refund not yet processed.
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Booking made in advance with payment and cancelled on the day of travel and the refund has been processed. | |
Booking made in advance with payment + booking fee and cancelled on the day of travel and the refund has not been processed. |  |
| If a booking status is "No service" the revenue doesn't get processed until travel date. |  |
Retail transactions
| Transaction type | Transaction type scenarios & how to filter your report view |
|---|---|
| Gift voucher purchase | Cash is receipted and transferred to the Gift voucher liability account on the same day. To filter the Trial Balance, select 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #.
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Gift voucher redemption | The income is removed from the Gift voucher liability account and recognised as revenue. To filter the Trial Balance, select the Book # and 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #.
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Retail/ admission item sale | Cash is receipted and the revenue is recognised on the same day. To filter the Trial Balance, select 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #.
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Retail/ admission item sale charged to account (with commission) | The debtor line represents the net sales value owed by the agent, the commission/discount amount is not recorded. The revenue is recognised on the same day. To filter the Trial Balance, select 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #.
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Ticketing Transactions
Ticket sales revenue is always recognised on the date of sale, rather than the expected date of travel.
| Transaction type | Transaction type scenarios & how to filter your report view |
|---|---|
Ticket agent all sale | Cash is receipted for the full ticket value, the ticketing creditor represents the full ticket value owed to the operator, less the ticketing debtor line owed to the seller. The ticket commission recognises the revenue earned. To filter the Trial Balance, select the Book # and 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #.
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Ticket deposit sale | Cash is receipted for the ticket deposit, the ticketing creditor represents the ticket value owed to the operator, less the ticketing debtor line owed to the seller, this should equal zero on a deposit sale as the only cash taken is retained by the seller. The ticket commission recognises the revenue earned. To filter the Trial Balance, select the Book # and 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #.
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| Ticket referral sale | This will only be recognised in the ledger once a ticket referral is confirmed. The referral debtor line represents the ticket earnings owed to the agent by the operator, there is no ticketing creditor line as there is no money owed to the operator, in this instance, no money is taken from the customer by the ticket seller. The ticket commission recognises the revenue earned. To filter the Trial Balance, select the Book # and 'Show blanks' within Book #, along with the POS # and 'Show blanks' within POS #.
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Troubleshooting & FAQs
Transactions
Why do I have unbalanced sales?
An unbalanced transaction is a booking that does not balance to $0.00. It could be caused by the following reasons:
- A direct booking was created and not paid at POS.
- An agent booking that was not posted to invoice before travel.
- Cancelled bookings that have not been refunded through POS or had a gift voucher issued for the credit.
- A direct booking that is only partially paid.
Users need to check for unbalanced transactions as part of their end-of-day process.
We have unbalanced sales on our daily sales export that we don't want to import into our finance system. How do we fix this?
The daily sales export is based on transactions that happened in the ledger on a specific day. If a booking was unbalanced on a particular day and fixed on a subsequent day, the export for that first day won’t change. It will be reversed out of unbalanced sales on the day it is fixed and allocated to the correct GL code. E.g. One day there will be $75 in unbalanced sales showing on the daily sales export, and if it's fixed the following day, then unbalanced sales for that day will be credited the $75 so they are balanced off in your finance system.
It is useful to use the Date and Book # fields on the Trial Balance report to see these movements as shown below.
Invoice
I reversed a posting on an invoice but the changes are not appearing on the Trial balance report.
The system uses a background task to process ledger transactions. While these are normally quite quick to process, they can take a minute or two to appear on the Trial Balance report. Please note that how quickly depends on how many transactions are currently being processed at any given time.
If they still don't appear this could be due to the system ledger lock. A ledger lock has been set up on your system for a specific number of months. Please speak to your companies Ibis system expert or finance team to confirm the ledger lock date your system is using.
If the booking you are trying to edit is older than the ledger lock, the changes will need to be manually pushed through. In this case, please contact Ibis support for assistance.
Gift Vouchers
I wrote off gift vouchers in bulk, but the gift voucher liability movements do not match the gift voucher transaction line on the Trial balance report for the same day.
To maintain the overall performance of the IBIS system, the IBIS ledger is run as a background task and will only process 200 changes per hour. If you have written off more than 200 gift vouchers, this could take a few hours to process through the system. Depending on the time of day and the number of vouchers, this could even mean that transactions will not appear on your ledge report until the following day which can create a slight discrepancy between the gift voucher liability report and the gift voucher movements on the Trial Balance report.
How can I see the total of what has been sent to my Debtors clearing account?
Filter for Booking Debtor, Booking Creditor and Debtor (if you post to account at POS) transactions and use the Invoiced field to see whether they have been invoiced (yes) or not (no). You can also use the Invoice # field to see which invoice is associated with the transaction.
