[Bulk] Re: new user of Gnucash - questions

[William Colls]

On 11-03-25 03:38 PM, Elizabeth Dodd wrote:

<SNIP>

> Modern computerised accounting does not have any end of month or end of
> year close of books. "Closing Books" at end of year is still popular
> but its not a necessary part of computerised bookkeeping. Certainly you
> can enter transactions continuously and perform the end of year
> functions weeks or months later.
> Gnucash does have a close books function for the end of the financial
> year.

<SNIP>

Not entirely true. I have worked with several modern systems that very 
much had the concept of "closing" built in. The important point about 
closing is that once a period is "closed", you can no longer post 
transactions into that period. This means that you may reliably know the 
state of affairs at a given moment in history, and be sure that no-one 
has tampered with the information. This has signifigance in a legal 
context: possibly compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, Public 
reporting and so on. While I doubt that many of the users of GNUCash 
have signifigant S-OX issues, it is something to consider.

Just my $0.02 Cdn.