What is a post-closing trial balance?

The post closing trial balance is a list of all accounts and their balances after the closing entries have been journalized and posted to the ledger. In other words, the post closing trial balance is a list of accounts or permanent accounts that still have balances after the closing entries have been made.

A post-closing trial balance is a listing of all balance sheet accounts containing non-zero balances at the end of a reporting period. The post-closing trial balance is used to verify that the total of all debit balances equals the total of all credit balances, which should net to zero. This is one of the last steps in the period-end closing process.

The post-closing trial balance contains no revenue, expense, gain, loss, or summary account balances, since these temporary accounts have already been closed and their balances moved into the retained earnings account as part of the closing process.