Preparing a WTB

You have been given the following trial balance:

Figure 12.1 – Client's trial balance

Here are the steps to prepare a WTB:

1. Open a new Excel workbook and copy this worksheet to a worksheet in the new workbook. Rename the worksheet CTB.

You will notice that the trial balance has separate columns for DR and CR. You will need to combine these into one column, with CR balances shown as negative (in brackets).

To do this, you will create another column of figures using the IF formula:

Figure 12.2 – Syntax for the IF formula

As you can see from Figure 12.2, the IF formula has three arguments. The first argument is logical_test, which is a statement that must evaluate as TRUE or FALSE. In this example, we are using C6 (the DR column or field) > 0.

This DR column contains either positive amounts for DR accounts or blanks for CR accounts. Therefore, our logical test will result in TRUE...