Uploading a client's trial balance: what is read
Which trial balance files Achekam reads (Excel, CSV and PDFs with a text layer), what happens to stray quotes and scans, and who resolves review items.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Trial balances reach a practice in every form imaginable. A tidy Excel export from the client's accounting package. A CSV that opens with half its columns shifted. A PDF printed from the package and e-mailed. A phone photo of a printout. Each one has to become a set of accounts and balances the firm can trust before any mapping or drafting begins.
This article explains which files Achekam reads into a trial balance, two problems it handles in a particular way, what it does when a file cannot be read, and where the work goes next.
Excel, CSV, or a PDF with a text layer
Staff upload trial balances in FINANCIAL INTAKE > Financial Intake Centre. Achekam reads three kinds of file into a trial balance:
- an Excel workbook;
- a CSV file;
- a PDF that has a text layer.
Files can be up to 200 MB each, which covers even very long trial balances with sub-accounts.
The phrase "a text layer" matters. A PDF exported directly from an accounting package usually contains the text itself, so the account names and amounts can be read. A PDF made by scanning or photographing a printout contains only a picture of the text. The two look the same on screen and behave very differently on upload.
Uploads arrive the way staff send them. Achekam does not collect documents automatically from a mailbox, Google Drive, SFTP or a schedule; the intake launcher shows those channels as not configured, and Microsoft 365 (OneDrive or SharePoint) is offered when connected. Files sent for intake are filed as originals in the client's "Uploads for processing" folder in the Document Centre, so the source stays on record next to what was read from it.
Stray quote marks in CSV files
CSV files have a well-known trap. A single stray quotation mark, often in an account name such as a 12" pipe stock line or a supplier with an apostrophe-like mark in its name, can make a simple CSV reader treat everything after it as one long piece of text. Rows vanish and totals stop agreeing, with no obvious reason.
Achekam reads a stray quote mark in a CSV as an ordinary character and notes it, so the later rows are not lost. The note is worth reading: it tells you which line had the problem, and occasionally points to an account name the client should tidy in its own system.
Scanned PDFs raise a review item
Achekam does not read a scanned trial balance PDF that has no text layer. Instead of guessing, it stops and raises a review item saying text recognition is needed.
That may seem unhelpful at first, but it is the safe behaviour. A trial balance read wrongly by text recognition can produce an account with a misread digit that still balances to the cent if two errors offset. On the server, text recognition is applied only to bank statements, where every line can be checked against a running balance.
For a scanned trial balance the practical answer is almost always a better file. Ask the client, or their bookkeeper, for an export straight from the accounting package: Excel or CSV is best, a PDF generated by the package is next.
Review items and who resolves them
A review item is a piece of work for a person, not an error message to dismiss. Each one says what is wrong and waits until someone deals with it: by uploading a readable file, by correcting the problem at source, or by recording why it can be set aside.
Review items sit alongside the other intake work. Low-confidence fields and possible duplicates from document intake wait in the Intake Review Queue for a person, and journals proposed from documents, bank lines or adjustments are only candidates that a person approves and posts. Treating the queue as part of each client's file, with a named person responsible, stops it becoming a backlog nobody owns.
| What arrives | What Achekam does | What the team does |
|---|---|---|
| Excel workbook | Reads it into a trial balance | Agrees totals to the client's report |
| CSV file | Reads it; notes any stray quote mark | Reads the note, checks the affected line |
| PDF with a text layer | Reads it into a trial balance | Agrees totals to the PDF |
| Scanned PDF, no text layer | Stops; raises a review item | Asks the client for an export |
Next step: mapping
Once a trial balance has been read and agreed, the next job is mapping each line to the statements. Achekam suggests where each line belongs, from the file's own mapping column, earlier mappings, AI or keyword rules, and no suggestion becomes an approved mapping until a person approves it.
Before you start, check the basics on the trial balance you have just loaded:
- Debits equal credits, or the difference is explained.
- The period end is the one you expect.
- The total of each class agrees to the client's own report.
- Any stray-quote notes have been read.
- There are no open review items for this file.
The first check is what a trial balance exists for: Investopedia's explainer on the trial balance describes it as a listing of ledger balances used to check that total debits equal total credits.
Asking clients for the right file
Most upload problems disappear when the request to the client is specific: an export of the trial balance from the accounting package, as Excel or CSV, for the exact year end. Put that wording into the firm's year-end request templates. Where the client can only produce a full ledger, see turning a general ledger export into a trial balance; for the next stage, see mapping trial balance lines: suggestions and approvals.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
