Capture your provider's trial balance

Capture provider balances fetches your accounting provider's own trial balance as at the last day of the month and stores it, so the Trial balance reconciled to provider check and the Trial Balance Reconciliation report can line it up against SKU.io's balances account by account. It's the one action in the whole close that contacts Xero or QuickBooks — every check reads data already in SKU.io.

Before you begin

• You need a connected accounting provider. With no accounting connection, the trial-balance check reports No accounting connection and there's nothing to capture.
• You need the accounting sync permission — the same one that starts a close, re-checks it and exports the pack.
• The month must not be closed yet. Capture provider balances disappears from the Report pack header once a month is closed.
• Know before you start that a success message is not proof of a fresh capture. If the run can't reach your provider it quietly serves an older capture and still reports success — see when your provider can't be reached.

Steps

1. Go to Accounting → Close.

2. In the Periods rail, click the month you're working on.

3. Scroll to the Report pack card, below Close checklist.

4. Click Capture provider balances, at the right-hand end of the Report pack heading row. Its tooltip reads: "Pulls the provider's trial balance for this period so the Trial Balance Reconciliation can compare it, account by account, against SKU."

5. Wait for the button to stop spinning. It runs straight away rather than queuing — there's no job to watch in the tray.

6. Read the message that appears. A successful run reports how many balances it took, for example "Captured 1 provider trial balance — reconciling." Nothing on the checklist has moved yet — the message is about the pull, not the comparison.

   That message does not prove the figures are as at this month end

   The same wording appears when SKU.io couldn't reach your provider and fell back to an older capture it already held. If Trial balance reconciled to provider still asks you to capture after step 7, read when your provider can't be reached — that combination is the whole signal you get.

7. Click Re-check in the month's header to re-run the automated checks against what you captured. Its tooltip reads: "Re-run every automated check against the current state of the books."

8. Find Trial balance reconciled to provider under Sync & reconciliation in the checklist. It now reports a result, for example "2 of 9 accounts out · 1,301.15 total variance", instead of asking you to capture.

9. Click the report icon at the end of that row — its tooltip reads Open this report — to read the account-by-account comparison in Trial Balance Reconciliation.

Capture, re-check, then export — in that order

The capture doesn't reconcile anything by itself. It stores the provider's figures; the check and the report read what's stored. That gives the three steps a fixed order, and skipping one leaves you with a misleading result:

• Before any capture exists for that month end, the Trial balance reconciled to provider row stands itself down and tells you what to do, in grey under its title: No provider trial balance captured for this period — use "Capture provider balances" in the report pack below. Its status icon is the grey dash the checklist uses for a check that doesn't apply. A stood-down check counts as complete in the checklist header's progress tally, so it doesn't hold your progress back — which is exactly why it's worth reading the row rather than trusting the count.
• Without a capture, the Trial Balance Reconciliation report has nothing to compare. On screen it reads No rows for this period, and the matching sheet in the exported workbook arrives with no account rows.
• After you capture, re-check the month so the checklist re-runs against the new figures, and export the pack after that — not before. An export taken between the capture and the re-check carries the old checklist outcomes.
• Once the month is closed, the saved sheet holds whatever had been captured at the moment of the close. Capturing afterwards doesn't change it — and the button is gone from a closed month anyway. If a closed month's comparison is wrong, reopen the month, capture again, and close it again.

Re-running a capture

Run Capture provider balances as often as you need. Each run replaces the stored figures for that month end rather than adding to them, so the usual loop works cleanly:

1. Read the variance in Trial Balance Reconciliation.
2. Fix what's wrong in Xero or QuickBooks — post the missing journal, correct the account.
3. Come back and click Capture provider balances again.
4. Click Re-check and read the row again.

Because it replaces, you never end up comparing against a half-updated provider picture — the comparison always reflects the last capture you took.

When nothing is captured

Not every accounting provider offers a trial balance to pull. Connections whose provider doesn't are skipped rather than treated as failures, so one unsupported connection doesn't stop the others from being captured.

If nothing at all was captured, the message says so: "No provider trial balances captured — check the connection supports trial-balance export." Check that the connection you expect to reconcile against is the one that's connected and active, under Accounting → Settings. Until something is captured, the trial-balance check keeps standing itself down — the close isn't blocked by it, because this check is a warning rather than a blocking one, but you'll be closing without a provider comparison behind you.

With more than one accounting connection

One capture covers every connection you have: the button pulls each supported provider's trial balance for the same month end in one run, and the message counts them — "Captured 2 provider trial balances — reconciling."

What matters is what happens when only some of them come back:

• One capture is enough to make the check grade. The Trial balance reconciled to provider row stands down only when no connection has a capture for that month end. With one of two captured, it grades on the one it has and reports a result as though the month were fully covered.
• The connection that wasn't captured contributes nothing. Its accounts produce no rows in Trial Balance Reconciliation and add nothing to Accounts Out Of Balance or Total Abs Variance. It is not marked absent anywhere on screen either, so a partly-captured month and a fully-captured one look the same.
• So count the connections in the report yourself. Open Trial Balance Reconciliation and check the Connection column names every connection you expect. A missing name is the only signal you get.

Where a check does grade several connections at once — Provider lock aligned and Provider documents reconciled — the worst result decides the row. See how SKU.io reconciles with Xero and QuickBooks.

When your provider can't be reached

If SKU.io can't reach your provider while capturing — the connection needs reconnecting, or the provider is down — it falls back to the most recent trial balance it already holds for that connection rather than failing outright. That earlier capture carries its own as-of date, which is not your month end. On a connection that has never been captured there is nothing to fall back to, so the run reports an error instead — which at least tells you plainly that it failed.

Watch for the symptom: the message reports a capture, but Trial balance reconciled to provider still says nothing has been captured for this period, and Trial Balance Reconciliation still shows no rows. The comparison only uses a trial balance taken as at the last day of the month, so an earlier one doesn't satisfy it. Reconnect the provider, then run Capture provider balances again.

The earlier capture's own date is not shown anywhere in the close hub. The message counts it as captured, and the report viewer's timestamp is when the report was computed, not the day the provider's figures are as at. That pair of symptoms above is the whole signal you get — so treat "it says it captured, and the row still asks me to capture" as this situation rather than as a bug in the check.

When the provider restates a month you already closed

A capture is a photograph, not a live feed. If your accountant posts an adjustment into Xero or QuickBooks for a month end you already captured and closed, nothing in SKU.io moves: the closed month keeps the figures it froze, Capture provider balances is gone from a closed month's Report pack header, and no message tells you the provider's books have changed underneath. Verify won't catch it either — it compares the close snapshots against SKU.io's own live figures, and your side is exactly what it was.

Deciding what to do about it is yours to make, and there are two ways to go:

• If the restatement changes the month's numbers of record, reopen the month, capture again, re-check, and close it again — see reopen a closed month. The reopen asks for a reason, so write the restatement into it.
• If it doesn't, leave the closed month alone and record it in Close notes when you close the month you're working on now. The old pack stays a true record of what the two systems held at the time, which is what a frozen pack is for.

Capturing on a month nobody has started

You can capture on a month you haven't started the close for. Doing it creates the month's record quietly in the background but doesn't start the close: the month stays Open, its checklist stays a preview, and no manual items are seeded for you to tick. Nothing is locked and nothing is committed.

That's useful when you want the provider comparison in front of you before you commit to working the month. When you're ready, click Start close as usual — see close a month.

Next steps

• Read the month's reports
• How SKU.io reconciles with Xero and QuickBooks
• Fix a failing check
• Close a month
• Map your accounts to QuickBooks