Understanding the Behavior of the Nimble AMS “AR Trial Balance” Extension

One challenge of reporting on orders or transactions in Nimble AMS is that it will tell you the AR (Accounts Receivable) as of the current moment.

We’ve worked with many Nimble AMS clients, and unbeknownst to many of them is that Nimble has a very handy tool for calculating AR as of a past date.

This is a very important data point for accounting teams that need to calculate and reconcile their AR totals at month-end.

Nimble has released several versions of their AR Trial Balance extension. Initially, you could only run detail at the Order Item level, but there are now three additional Detail Level options.

Balance

The Balance field always reflects the Detail Level you selected, so it will always be safe to SUM on that field in reports (assuming your report filters are correct, e.g., you aren’t pulling in overlapping AR Snapshots).

Below is the out-of-the-box help text on the Balance field, at least as of Winter ‘26.

The order’s outstanding unpaid balance.

This is misleading because that is only correct when Detail Level = Order. Misleading or missing help text can be a very frustrating and confusing thing for staff, which is why Seawalker is extremely vigilant about writing custom help text in everything we deliver to Nimble AMS clients.

The help text should instead say something more comprehensive, such as:

If the Detail Level is Order, this is the Order’s Balance.

If the Detail Level is Module, this is the sum of the Balance of all order items with a Record Type that matches the AR Snapshot’s Order Type.

If the Detail Level is Order Item, this is the Order Item’s Balance.

If the Detail Level is Product, this is the Order Item Line’s Balance.

Now THAT’S helpful help text!

Order Item Balance

Here are some important pointers on the Order Item Balance field:

• You should completely ignore Order Item Balance except when Detail Level = Product because that’s the only detail level that uses it. In this scenario, it distinguishes the Balance (of the order item line) from the parent Order Item Balance.

• Never sum up on Order Item Balance since that would lead to incorrect calculations if you have order items containing more than one order item line. This is because...