Balance Sheet

The Balance Sheet summarizes the financial state of your business at a chosen point in time. It provides an overview of the value of your business’s assets, liabilities, and owner’s equity. The Balance Sheet displays accounts with asset, liability and equity account types. It's not possible to include accounts with a different account type.

To run a Balance Sheet, you need to choose a report date. You can then compare the report date against past periods. Alternatively, click a common report format, such as monthly comparison, and Xero will configure the Balance Sheet for you.

If you click a balance in the report, you drill down to the Account Transactions report. If you click the Current Year Earnings, you drill down to the Profit and Loss report.

In your Balance Sheet, Retained Earnings is the net profit from previous years' Profit and Loss reports. It also includes any other adjustments made, for example adjustments for distributions to stakeholders. To see how it's made up, run the Account Transactions report for retained earnings, from your Xero start date.

You need the adviser, standard + reports or read only user role to access this report.

If your organization uses multicurrency, and you have either the adviser or standard + reports user roles, you can convert the report results from your base currency to a foreign currency. 

1. In the Accounting menu, select Reports.

2. Find and open the Balance Sheet. You can use the search field in the top right corner.

3. Select the Date or click the arrow  next to the date to select a common reporting date like End of last month or End of last quarter.

4. Select any other options you want the report to show. You can customize your Balance Sheet as per below.

5. Click Update to run the report.

Use the settings and filters at the top of the report to customise it. After selecting an option below, click Update to refresh the report with your option applied.

Compare with

Under Compare with, select the number of past periods to compare against your Date. You can choose the period to be days, months, quarters or years. The day of the month will match what you’ve selected in the date field.

If you’re running the report for a date that doesn’t match the end of the comparison period, you can choose to compare with the end of month, financial quarter or financial year.

Currency

If your organisation uses multicurrency, you can choose in which currency you want the report results to show. Under Currency, select from the currencies enabled for your organisation.

If you run the report in your base currency and show the Exchange rate note:

• Foreign currency transactions are marked with a currency icon . Hover over the icon to see the exchange rate used to convert that transaction into your base currency.

• You can view more details on the Exchange rate note below the report.

If you run the report in a foreign currency enabled for your organisation and show the Exchange rate note:

• The chosen currency displays at the top of the report. Hover over the currency icon  next to it to see the exchange rate used for the report.

• You can view more details on the Exchange rate note below the report.

Xero converts the results into your chosen currency using the exchange rate as at the report date. This is the rate in your currency settings – either the rate provided by XE.com or a rate you added.

If you add comparison periods to your report, Xero converts the results using the exchange rate that applied at the end of each period.

Filter

If your organisation has set up tracking, click Filter and select the options you want to display. Once you've finished, click Apply.

The selected filters appear in a text block on the report. You can move or delete the text block.

More

Click More to:

• Select an Accounting basis, either Accrual or Cash

• Show or hide the Accounting basis (this will show under the report heading)

• Show or hide the Account codes (this also sorts accounts by their codes)

• Show or hide the Currency selected for the report (this shows under the report heading)

• Show or hide Decimals

• Show or hide the Exchange rate note if your organisation uses multicurrency

About common formats

Xero has a range of common preset formats to help you use the advanced features of the Balance Sheet.

There are three common formats:

• Monthly comparison – shows you the current month compared to the previous two months to date.

• Quarterly comparison – compares how you're tracking so far this quarter compared with the previous two quarters.

• Yearly comparison – shows your financial position for the year, then compares it with the previous two years.

To show the past two full months, quarters or years, click Compare with, then select Compare to end of [period].

Select a common format

1. In the Accounting menu, select Reports.

2. Find and open the Balance Sheet. You can use the search field in the top right corner.

3. From the panel on the left side of the screen, select a common format (you might need to open the panel first by clicking the expand icon ). When you select a common format, it will refresh the Balance Sheet and apply this format.

You can exit the common format and return to the standard report if you prefer. On the panel, under Xero standard report, click Balance Sheet.