The advice to Anita to close a year's books, with warning present in the that doing so will destroy usability of reports henceforth, is quite alarming! What is meant by "closing" in GnuCash-jargon seems different than what is meant more usually in accounting.
In an entirely manual accounting, closing the books at the end of year or other period involves several steps: 1. Recognize accruals (non-cash entries) such as: **depreciation **allowance for bad debt (uncollectible accounts) **accrue payroll liabilities (assuming payroll date was not at the end of year, some liability of salaries and benefits needs to be accrued **accrue tax liabilities **other adjusting entries (to adjust assets and liabilities) 2. Make journal entries transferring expense and revenue account balances to income statement summary accounts, i.e. generating an income statement 3. Close the income statement summary accounts to retained earnings 4. Freezing forever the accounts for the period (in software, this would be done by putting a lock on any transactions before the new period) I am guessing that GnuCash does not support #4. I gather that in GnuCash, #2 and #3 don't need to be done, because the income statement report already exists. And if they are done anyhow then usability of reports will be destroyed. A user wants to be able to generate reports from prior years, e.g. for making comparisons. About #1, advising Anita how to proceed would require some more information on what the current balance sheet shows and what assets and liabilities need to be updated. Anita, does this begin to help? And could anyone else clarify? I personally am willing to help update the GnuCash documentation about closing, as this is important! cheers, Don On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 4:41 PM, DaveC49 <davidcous...@bigpond.com> wrote: > Anita > > The Wiki has a secion discussing it at > > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Closing_Books > > and the documentation tells you how to use the built in routine for it at > > https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-help/tool-close-book.html > > David Cousens > > > > -- > View this message in context: http://gnucash.1415818.n4. > nabble.com/How-to-close-a-financial-year-tp4691662p4691794.html > Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
