Export Trial Balance from Sage: Step-by-Step CT600 Guide

If you use Sage Business Cloud for your bookkeeping, you can export your trial balance and import it directly when filing your company tax return. This guide explains exactly how to get the data out of Sage and use it to file your CT600 with HMRC.

What Is a Trial Balance?

A trial balance is a summary of all your company's account balances at a specific date — typically your accounting year end. It lists every nominal account (turnover, cost of sales, wages, rent, fixed assets, debtors, creditors, and so on) along with the closing balance for each.

Your trial balance is the foundation of your company tax return. Instead of entering every figure manually into your CT600, you can import the trial balance directly and let the software map your accounts to the correct boxes.

Sage Business Cloud vs Sage 50

Sage offers two main products for UK small businesses:

Sage Business Cloud Accounting — cloud-based, subscription model, suitable for most small limited companies
Sage 50 — desktop-based, more feature-rich, commonly used by larger companies and accountants

This guide focuses on Sage Business Cloud. The export process in Sage 50 follows a similar route (Nominal Ledger → Trial Balance → Export), but the menu structure differs slightly. Both products export CSV files that can be imported into CT600 filing software.

Before You Export: Check Your Books Are Complete

Before exporting your trial balance, make sure your Sage account is fully up to date for the period:

All sales invoices have been raised and dated correctly
All expense transactions are entered and categorised
Your bank accounts are reconciled
Payroll journals have been posted for the full year
Year-end adjustments have been made (depreciation, accruals, prepayments)

Missing transactions at this stage will result in an incorrect trial balance, which means an incorrect CT600. It is much easier to fix bookkeeping issues in Sage now than to make manual adjustments later.

Step-by-Step: Export Trial Balance from Sage Business Cloud

Follow these steps exactly:

Log in to Sage Business Cloud
Go to Reporting
Select Trial Balance from the reports list
Click Customise if you need to adjust the date range or account groupings
Set your year end date as the report date
Click Export
Choose CSV format

Your trial balance will download as a CSV file. Save it somewhere you can find it — you will need it for the next step.

Setting the Correct Date

This is the most common mistake: make sure the report date matches your accounting period end date, not today's date. Your company's accounting period end is shown on your Companies House records and your previous CT600 filings.

For example, if your company year end is 31 March 2025, set the trial balance date to 31/03/2025.

Using the Customise Option

If your Sage account uses multiple cost centres or departments, the Customise option lets you consolidate these into a single summary view. For CT600 purposes, you want a consolidated trial balance — not a department-by-department breakdown. If you are unsure, leave the default settings and export.

Importing Your Trial Balance into Your CT600

Once you have the CSV file, upload it when filing your company tax return. The import tool reads your Sage account names and maps them to the relevant profit and loss and balance sheet categories.

The import handles:

Profit and loss accounts — turnover, cost of sales, gross profit, overheads, depreciation, interest payable
Balance sheet accounts — fixed assets, current assets, debtors, creditors, loans, share capital, retained earnings

After importing, review the mapped values carefully before proceeding. Check that each account has been assigned to the correct category.

How Sage Nominal Codes Map to the CT600

Sage Business Cloud uses a standard nominal code structure. Here is how the main categories typically map to the CT600 tax computation:

Sage category	CT600 area
Sales / Turnover (4000–4999)	Trading income
Cost of Sales (5000–5999)	Cost of sales
Overheads / Expenses (6000–7999)	Administrative expenses
Depreciation (8000–8099)	Added back — replaced by capital allowances
Directors' salaries (7001)	Deductible employment cost
Interest payable (7900+)	Loan relationship debits
Fixed assets (0001–0999)	Balance sheet
Debtors / Creditors (1100–2299)	Balance sheet

If you have customised your nominal codes, the mapping may differ from this table. Always review the imported values rather than assuming they are correct.

Key Areas to Check After Import

Depreciation

Your Sage accounts will include a depreciation charge for the year. This is added back in the tax computation and replaced by HMRC's capital allowances system. The filing software handles this automatically once the depreciation account is correctly identified. Do not remove the depreciation entry from the trial balance — it needs to be present so it can be added back.

Directors' Salaries and Dividends

If your director takes a salary through PAYE and also receives dividends, make sure these are recorded separately in Sage. Salary is a deductible business expense and will reduce your taxable profit. Dividends are a distribution of profit — they are not deductible and should not appear in the profit and loss section of your trial balance.

Directors' Loan Account

If your director has borrowed money from the company (or lent money to it), there will be a directors' loan account on the balance sheet. This is not income or expense — it is a balance sheet item. Make sure it is not mapped to a P&L category during the import.

Retained Earnings

Sage carries forward the accumulated retained profit from all previous years as a credit balance in the equity section of the balance sheet. This is normal — it is not the current year profit. The current year profit or loss will appear as a separate line.

Common Issues with Sage Trial Balance Exports

Trial balance is out of balance

If total debits do not equal total credits in your exported file, there is an underlying bookkeeping issue in Sage. This must be corrected before you proceed — do not try to file a CT600 based on an out-of-balance trial balance.

VAT account showing a balance

If your company is VAT-registered, there may be a VAT liability or refund on the balance sheet at year end. This is a balance sheet item — it does not affect your taxable profit.

Missing payroll transactions

If wages or salary figures look too low, check that all payroll journals have been posted in Sage for the full accounting period. Missing payroll entries are a frequent cause of understated wage costs.

Export file opens incorrectly in Excel

If Excel garbles the CSV file on opening (especially with special characters), try opening via Data → From Text/CSV and specifying UTF-8 encoding. Alternatively, use Google Sheets, which handles CSV imports more reliably.

What Happens After You Import

Once your trial balance is imported and the mapping has been reviewed, your CT600 filing software will:

Calculate the taxable profit (accounting profit adjusted for depreciation, capital allowances, and other items)
Generate the CT600 boxes automatically
Create the iXBRL accounts in the required format for HMRC
Allow you to review and then submit

If your accounting period is over 12 months (common in the first year of trading), the CT600 will be split into two separate submissions automatically.

For a full overview of what the company tax return involves before you start, see our company tax return checklist.

Other Accounting Software Guides

If you or your clients use other platforms, the same import process applies:

For a comparison of Sage against dedicated CT600 tools, see our TinyTax vs Sage comparison.

Summary

Exporting your trial balance from Sage Business Cloud takes less than two minutes: go to Reporting → Trial Balance → Export → CSV. The critical step is setting the correct year end date before you export. After import, check the mapping for depreciation, directors' remuneration, and balance sheet accounts before filing your CT600 with HMRC.