Question

Change in fiscal year end and reporting

Forum|Forum|2 months ago
April 15, 2026
1 reply
9 views

We recently changed our fiscal year-end from March 31st to December 31st in Quickbooks Online. I followed the steps to change the fiscal year-end via "Account and settings > Advanced" for both fiscal year and tax year. I also changed the sales tax reporting periods from March 31st to December 31st for both CRA (GST) and BC Ministry of Finance (PST) via "Edit agency settings". Upon completion of the change, running the following standard reports have resulted in the following outputs:

1. Trial balance (all dates and custom dates) results in the correct account balances;

2. Transaction report (all dates and custom dates) results in the correct account balances;

3. General ledger (all dates) results in the correct account balances;

4. General ledger (custom dates) results in the "Balance" column not agreeing to the trial balance and transaction report.

Based on what I have read on the community boards, I can confirm that my transactional data is complete, however, when running the general ledger report with custom dates, I get a variance. After further investigation of the transactions, it appears that transactions with PST (sales tax) are not getting captured correctly in the "Balance" column. Is this a glitch with the report? Or have I not updated something correctly to appropriately capture the PST in the balance?

Please provide any thoughts?

QuickBooks Online

G

GenieBabe_L

QuickBooks Team

Hello there. The difference you're seeing between the General Ledger and the Transaction Detail report in QuickBooks Online (QBO) isn't a glitch, it's how QBO displays the Balance column for custom dates.

For custom dates, QBO calculates a beginning balance based on your full history and adds new PST transactions to this amount. In contrast, the other report acts as a Net Change report, starting the Balance column at $0 and only showing transactions within that date range.

Since one report includes your historical PST balance and the other shows only the current period, the Balance columns won't match. To see a true historical running balance, use the General Ledger report.

For any further questions or clarifications, leave a comment below.

G

GrantBondAuthor

Thanks for your response. I understand the nuance associated with the Transaction Report. The key issue I am having is the result when I run the Trial Balance and General Ledger reports (both using accrual setting). As an example:

1. Run Trial Balance report (all dates) - balance for account X - $1,000

2. Run Trial balance report (custom dates) - balance for account X - $1,000

3. Run General ledger report (all dates) - balance for account X - $1,000

4. Run General ledger report (custom dates) - balance for account X - $900

The correct account balance is $1,000. This discrepancy, when using custom dates, appears to be impacted by historical PST amounts that are not being picked up in the "Balance" column when using custom dates. There were no issues until we changed our fiscal year-end date within the Quickbooks Online settings.

Thanks for your assistance.

J

Jayson_E

QuickBooks Team

Hi Grant, thanks for the additional details and clarifications.

Since this issue appeared after you changed your fiscal year in the program settings, I recommend contacting our Live Support team during their available support hours so they can investigate this further. They’ll be able to review the report behavior in more detail and confirm whether the discrepancy is related to how prior-period PST amounts are being handled after the year-end change.

Please let us know if you have any other concerns.

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