I think I solved this and wanted to share the solution for future searchers.
If earnings are being moved to partner equity accounts then there is no real concept of "previous" earnings any longer, and the solution is to combine them into one. What I've done is set both "current" and "previous" earnings to be a single "Earnings" account, and partner allocations are debited from that account ``` option "account_current_earnings" "Earnings" option "account_previous_earnings" "Earnings" 2023-01-01 * "Partners" "2022 allocations" ^2022-book-closing Equity:Earnings 1000.00 USD Equity:Capital:PartnerA -600.00 USD Equity:Capital:PartnerB -400.00 USD ``` On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 4:23 PM Daniel Schultz <sli...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello all, > > I'm using Beancount to track the books for a partnership. > > At the end of the year I know that earnings are assigned to the > `Earnings:Current` account (and any previous year's earnings are assigned > to `Earnings:Previous` > > Part of closing the books involves dividing those earnings between the > partners according to the formula defined in our bylaws. I had been doing > this with a transaction similar to: > > ``` > 2023-01-01 * "Partners" "2022 allocations" ^2022-book-closing > Equity:Earnings:Previous 1000.00 USD > Equity:Capital:PartnerA -600.00 > USD > Equity:Capital:PartnerB -400.00 > USD > ``` > > This makes time constrained views look correct (since beancount populates > past profit into Earnings:Previous which offsets these transfers). > However it results in odd reports when not viewing in a time frame (since > beancount ONLY populates Earnings:Current, resulting in a positive > `Earnings:Previous). > > Using `Equity:Earnings:Current` as the base account results in the same > kind of issue but in reverse (non-time views look fine, but time > constrained views appear off) > > What would you all recommend as the best entries to register these kinds > of transactions / keep track of owner equity using Beancount? > > Best, > - Dan > > -- > Daniel Schultz (he / him) > @slifty > -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CAAy%2BrnXQ%3DhgEbdOf_txkxw1HLtdzRWo1OcvmeA3yAyV56PNgDg%40mail.gmail.com.
