You've entered everything you can think of, the totals still disagree, and the difference is staring at you. Take a breath: this is one of the most common walls executors hit, and it is almost always caused by one of a small number of mistakes. This checklist walks through them in the order they usually turn up, so you can find yours instead of re-adding the same column for the fourth time.
Estate accountings commonly follow one rule: charges must equal credits. In plain words, everything you are responsible for — the property you started with, plus everything the estate took in, plus any gains on sales — must exactly equal everything you can account for: expenses paid, distributions made to beneficiaries, any losses on sales, and whatever the estate still holds. When the two sides disagree, the gap is not mysterious; it is the exact sum of your errors — an entry that is missing, doubled, or wrong. The direction is your first clue. If the charges side is bigger, something that went out or is still on hand probably never got recorded. If the credits side is bigger, something that came in probably never got recorded. Keep that direction in mind as you work down the list below.
Missing entries are usually the first thing to check, and they tend to be one of four kinds. An asset was sold but the proceeds were never entered as a receipt — the asset quietly left your property-on-hand list, but the money never officially arrived, so check every sale against a matching receipt. A distribution was made but not recorded — a check to a beneficiary, a car signed over, furniture handed off in person; in-kind transfers are especially easy to forget because no money moved. Bank interest was credited silently — small amounts posted month after month that only appear on statements, which add up to a gap that matches nothing you remember doing. And an expense was paid from your own pocket and forgotten — postage, copies, a utility bill covered in the scramble of the first weeks. Each of these leaves a gap equal to one real-world transaction, so if your difference matches a statement line or a check you remember writing, you have found it.
If nothing is missing, look for entries that are present but incorrect. The first is an amount typed twice — the same deposit entered on two different dates, or once as a receipt and again under another schedule. The telltale sign is a gap that exactly equals one entry already in your ledger. The second is subtler: confusing carrying value with sale price. When an asset listed on your inventory at one value sells for a different amount, the difference is a real gain or loss that needs its own entry. If you record the sale proceeds but leave the asset at its old value — or drop it without recording the difference — you create a phantom gain or loss, and your account is off by precisely the spread between the inventory value and what the buyer actually paid. The fix is to acknowledge the difference explicitly rather than letting it hide inside the numbers.
Rounding each figure to the nearest dollar feels harmless, but dozens of small roundings compound into a gap that matches no real transaction — the most maddening kind of error, because you will hunt for a payment that never existed. Enter every amount exactly as it appears on the source document, down to the cent. The pattern of the gap then becomes diagnostic: a difference of a few odd cents is commonly a typo or a rounding artifact, while a clean round-number difference usually points to a genuine missing or doubled entry.
When the quick checks don't surface it, the estate bank statement is your ground truth. Take each statement in order and tick off every line against your ledger: every deposit should match a recorded receipt, and every withdrawal should match a recorded expense or distribution. Anything on the statement but not in your ledger is a missing entry. Anything in your ledger but not on any statement is either a non-cash item that needs its own treatment — like an asset distributed in kind — or an error. Work one month at a time and compare running balances as you go; the first month where your ledger and the bank disagree is the month where the mistake lives. This is slower than the shortcuts above, but it finds virtually every cash discrepancy, including two errors that partially cancel each other out.
You can do all of this in a spreadsheet, but a spreadsheet won't tell you which side is off. EstateLedger keeps charges and credits totaled live as you type, works in cents by default, handles the gain-and-loss entry when a sale price differs from carrying value, and when the account doesn't balance it tells you the size and direction of the gap — whether you're likely missing money in or money out. Building your account and running the balance check is free, as many times as you need, and your numbers stay in your browser; you only pay if you choose to export the finished schedules. None of this is legal advice — check what your court or jurisdiction actually requires — but most balance problems are bookkeeping problems, and bookkeeping problems can be found.
It's tempting, but an adjusting entry you can't explain invites exactly the questions you're trying to avoid from beneficiaries or the court. Small gaps are commonly rounding artifacts or single typos, so re-enter your figures in cents and compare against the bank statement. Finding the real cause is usually faster than defending a fudge later.
Commonly it means something on the money-out or still-on-hand side was never recorded — a forgotten distribution, an expense you paid personally, or an out-of-date asset list. If credits are bigger, look instead for unrecorded money in, like sale proceeds or silently credited bank interest. A doubled entry can push either side, so check for a gap that exactly matches an existing entry too.
Often, but not always. Two errors can partially offset each other, leaving an odd remainder that matches no single transaction. That's why line-by-line reconciliation against the estate bank statement is the reliable fallback: it surfaces virtually every individual cash discrepancy rather than just the net difference.
EstateLedger is a running ledger for executors: entries go in as they happen, charges and credits stay visible, and the balance check diagnoses what kind of entry is missing when they diverge. Free to build and check; $12 once to export the schedules. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing uploaded.
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