trial balance

from WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)

trial balance
    n 1: a balance of debits and credits in double-entry
         bookkeeping; drawn up to test their equality

from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

Trial balance \Tri"al bal`ance\ (Bookkeeping)
   The testing of a ledger to discover whether the debits and
   credits balance, by finding whether the sum of the personal
   credits increased by the difference between the debit and
   credit sums in the merchandise and other impersonal accounts
   equals the sum of personal debits. The equality would not
   show that the items were all correctly posted.
   [Webster 1913 Suppl.]