The trial balance is an error checking step that helps companies using double entry accounting to locate errors in their ledgers. In double entry accounting, each debit has a corresponding credit which means that incomes are allocated to match savings of expenditures. A trial balance tallies all credits and matches them against debits. If the credits do not match the debits, a discrepancy account is created with and entry to offset the imbalance. Next, the ledgers are reviewed to reduce and ultimately eliminate the discrepancy.