Balance Sheet - Retained earnings?

[John Whitmore]

On Sun, Feb 05, 2017 at 09:15:33AM -0800, John Ralls wrote:
> 
> > On Feb 5, 2017, at 8:47 AM, John Whitmore <arigead at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I'm using GnuCash to produce a balance sheet report and in the output of the
> > report I've got:
> > 
> > Equity
> > Retained Earnings         457.04
> > Total Equity              457.04
> > 
> > My probelm is that there are no transactions in the Retained Earnings
> > account. It's only there because it would have been created when I first
> > created my initial business accounts. So there's zero transactions, so zero
> > balance but the balance sheet is coming up with a number for it.
> > 
> > I'm a bit confused, as that number ain't showing up anywhere either. Actually
> > I'm totally confused by it.
> 
> The balance sheet report creates a virtual Retains Earnings account and populates it with the net of the income and expense accounts.
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls
> 

Forgot to send thanks for that message. Thanks for your help, such an obvious
solution, when I looked at the numbers, but I went off looking at the various
accounts. 

thanks again