Sounds very much like using your 'pad' command on 31st December every year for each account?
On Sun, Dec 25, 2016 at 5:33 AM, Martin Blais <bl...@furius.ca> wrote: > On Sat, Dec 24, 2016 at 4:24 PM, Oon-Ee Ng <ngoonee.t...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Thanks Martin, that sort of confirms my thoughts on the matter. Most >> likely because my own background is engineering and computer science >> rather than accounting, though. >> >> Regarding performance, perhaps there can be a convention regarding >> splitting input files by year. So I'd have one per year, and two >> 'main' files, one of which includes every year, and one of which >> includes only this year (maybe plus the previous 1 or 2 years if >> necessary). > > > A couple of notes: > > - I think it should be possible to automatically generate the offsetting > closing and opening transactions to insert in each of your files to bring > the opening balances to what they should be. Note that if you change > anything in the past files, those transactions may require updates (that > sound like a PIA to me). Anyhow, my point is that the act of "closing" > should be automatable with a script. (I'm pretty sure I must have hacked > this in the past.) > > - About performance: I'm revisiting the caching code now so that the parsing > stage will have a per-file cache instead of a single large cache for the > entire result. That by itself might make a multi-file configuration faster, > without an explicit closing of each year, though parsing is only about %30 > of processing time. > > > >> On Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 12:03 PM, Martin Blais <bl...@furius.ca> wrote: >> > In Beancount this procedure is something that is done automatically at >> > reporting time by the software. We call the operation "clear" and >> > there's no >> > particular reason to stick with the antiquated method of you having to >> > do >> > this explicitly yourself. We have computers; the software can do that >> > for >> > you. >> > >> > Well, perhaps performance could be one reason, but Beancount is easily >> > fast >> > enough for 10-15 years of a normal person's data, and the way forward is >> > to >> > do some performance optimizations instead of forcing the user through >> > this >> > antiquated practice of having to close on some arbitrary time boundary. >> > I >> > know H/Ledger users are fond of following old accounting practices for >> > some >> > sort of romantic attachment, but I question the status quo, and so far I >> > see >> > no rationale to force you to have to go through this rigamarole just >> > because >> > people did it this way 20 years ago and commercial software cathers to >> > people used to that. Just keep your entire dataset in one place and >> > process >> > it every time. It gives you the freedom to go back to any point in time >> > and >> > draw a balance sheet or income statement for any arbitrary period. >> > bean-web >> > by default provides year-boundary subsets, just like you need it. This >> > is an >> > artifact of reporting. >> > >> > If that doesn't work out well for some reason, please let us know (and >> > please be very specific if you do so, I've thought about this a lot). >> > >> > >> > >> > On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 8:11 PM, Oon-Ee Ng <ngoonee.t...@gmail.com> >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> With Gnucash, one of the things I did every calendar year end (private >> >> accounts) was to 'close books'. In summary, what it does is create two >> >> transactions, the objective of which is to balance all >> >> incomes/expenses to zero. The period of time covered is normally a >> >> year, but configurable. >> >> >> >> Quick example, initial stage:- >> >> >> >> Expenses:Food 200 USD >> >> Expenses:Drinks 100 USD >> >> Income:Salary -400 USD >> >> >> >> The 'close book' function would then create two transactions which >> >> would be (in beancount syntax):- >> >> >> >> 2014-12-31 * >> >> Expenses:Food -200 USD >> >> Expenses:Drink -100 USD >> >> Equity:CummulativeExpenses 300 USD >> >> 2014-12-31 * >> >> Income:Salary 400 USD >> >> Equity:RetainedEarnings 400 USD >> >> >> >> The destination accounts would be configurable, I can't remember where >> >> I got their names from really. >> >> >> >> I found it necessary to do this every year so that within the year I >> >> could have a clean view of how much I had spent just in this calendar >> >> year in the account summary (without having to run reports). Of course >> >> I now realize I should have used the internal view filter in gnucash, >> >> but... >> >> >> >> Anyway the primary question I guess is whether such 'close book' >> >> transactions make sense, or whether I should get rid of them entirely. >> >> >> >> -- >> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> >> Groups >> >> "Beancount" group. >> >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> >> an >> >> email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> >> To post to this group, send email to beancount@googlegroups.com. >> >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> >> >> >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CAGQ70esYPA%3Dm-KiSq2DoHNSy%3DMDHx-FELBpZqKEJDQWq%3Dsy8TQ%40mail.gmail.com. >> >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > >> > >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> > Groups >> > "Beancount" group. >> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> > an >> > email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> > To post to this group, send email to beancount@googlegroups.com. >> > To view this discussion on the web visit >> > >> > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CAK21%2BhOc3S_Y6dTGvbxvr8LEGYhN%3DDVrGcZjg8rAfQ8o_ZSWOg%40mail.gmail.com. >> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Beancount" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to beancount@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CAGQ70eu_FRoUJpPzTPfQiHRN0-Oxjwq-PXvdFHiecnOi03W%3Dwg%40mail.gmail.com. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Beancount" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to beancount@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CAK21%2BhO3z_%3Dq8x%3DEqmQ4y0JvY_gHAf7YgHTxecVqeWtQHnys_A%40mail.gmail.com. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. 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