Hi Jralls
So just wish to double check my understanding of gnucash's data format
for a balance-sheet on date X
There are two possibilities for displaying the right-hand-side
1. Liabilities + Equity + Retained Earnings + Trading Balances
2. Liabilities + Equity + Retained Earnings + Unrealized Gains
"Retained Earnings" should be NULL if the user has properly closed the
books on the balance sheet date X.
In my understanding, "Trading Balances" and "Unrealized Gains" are one
and the same -- in balance-sheet.scm the unrealized-gain-collector is
only populated if book->trading-accounts setting is disabled. (btw this
causes a 'bug' whereby a book with 'enable-trading-accounts', but was
later switched to 'disable-trading-accounts' will then add both the
unrealized-gain-collector and the trading-balance the right-hand-side).
This seems to be deconstruct current balance-sheet?
(I can't seem to find any unrealized-gain issue... from using different
price-sources... perhaps this is beyond my understanding.)
On 11/08/18 22:41, John Ralls wrote:
Chris,
Remember that we’ve long advised users that they need not close their
books, they can run a balance sheet report for any day. IMO removing
that capability would be a major breakage.
I suspect that you needed to use trading accounts because you didn’t
book the trading gains and losses as income. Users should do that
regardless of using trading accounts and doing so should make it
unnecessary for the balance sheet report to include trading accounts.
Unrealized gains are another matter entirely and are a result of using
prices from the price database instead of actual cost from the
transaction data. IMO the balance sheet report shouldn’t be taking
prices from the price db and shouldn’t be able to see unrealized
gains, but if price source is going to be an option then an unrealized
gains line flows from that so that users don’t waste a bunch of time
chasing an imbalance caused by price differences.
https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=775368 is related because
that’s currently how the balance sheet report gets the “actual” costs.
Regards,
John Ralls
On Aug 10, 2018, at 11:40 PM, Christopher Lam
<christopher....@gmail.com <mailto:christopher....@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi John
I've managed to make the left-side (activa?) match the right-side
(passiva?)
https://screenshots.firefox.com/RNvkjaxnYyxpGkYn/null
1) it does require closing books on the balance-sheet date
2) it does require adding trading-accounts
The existing balsheet introduces/calculates the "Retained Earnings",
"Trading Gains" and "Unrealized Gains", whereas the current iteration
of new-balsheet will not.
To me this is the easiest method to ensure both sides produce the
same total, and is now technically correct - if the user has not
closed their books, the balance sheet won't balance.
This is giving me a headache :(
Should a new balsheet calculate and report these '(fake) retained
earnings', and 'unrealized gains' ???
C
On 09/08/18 08:32, John Ralls wrote:
On Aug 8, 2018, at 8:51 AM, Geert Janssens
<geert.gnuc...@kobaltwit.be> wrote:
I haven't been following every detail of this. However I note on
most balance
sheets the total assets doesn't match total net worth (or
liabilities/equity).
In most, this is fixed by including the retained earnings.
I believe at least in most European countries the "left hand side"
(Assets,
Active) and "right hand side" (Passive or liabilities + equity) of the
multicolumn view should balance (it's called balance sheet for a
reason).
That would suggest retained earnings does have to be part of the
balance
sheet.
However I'm not an accountant and perhaps your book is slightly
contrived so I
don't know the exact answer here.
As for the "multi-column" vs one column debate, both present the
same data.
The only difference is visual representation or style.
As of recently I have become a strong proponent of separating
structure (or
accounting functionality in a different context) from style, I
think this
should be delegated to the realm of css. This particular layout
variation can
IMO be handled by making divs for each large group and either let
them follow
normal flow or use float to move them next to each other. If you
will you can
have a European style sheet and an American one, or an Australian
or whatever.
As for "categories", I read Frank's earlier reply as if he agreed
that at
least for now the account organization is something to be done in
the CoA, not
in report code.
The Balance Sheet is indeed supposed to balance, but in normal
practice it balances only when the book is “closed”, i.e. when all
of the income and expense accounts are summed up and added to
Equity. In US corporate books the cumulative total of income and
expenses lives in an Equity account called “Retained Earnings”.
In the pen-and-paper days a “Trial Balance” was computed outside of
the books before closing as a way to catch errors before making the
closing entries and writing the formal Balance Sheet.
GnuCash's existing Balance Sheet Report creates the “Retained
Earnings” line so that one need not close the books (Tools>Close
Book) in order to get a balanced report. Removing that feature might
be more formally correct but it would mean that users would have to
close their book before running a balance sheet. That would be a big
change and I don’t think that we want to do it. On the other hand
“Retained Earnings” isn’t the right term for many cases, so it would
be a useful improvement to make it configurable.
There’s a second problem with the current report as well: If the
user does close their books periodically they’ll have an account for
the accumulation that may well be called “Retained Earnings”. The
Balance Sheet Report will dutifully report the contents of that
account and, if there are income and expenses after the last close,
add a second “Retained Earnings” line. That looks a bit odd and
might be confusing; ISTR we’ve had comments on the user list about
just that.
Regards,
John Ralls
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