Undocumented? Close book

[Birger Baksaas]

The nice thing with GnuCash / XML is that it works on a single file
(book) just like say Open Office. So, save backups, for instance just
before running (or testing) Close Book. Then it is easy to go back if
the function did something strange.

Remember: close book is used for handling accounting periods (relevant
for business accounting, primarily at year's end). 

Google gave:

http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/HEAD/bookperiods.html

Wikipedia: "To close the books for the month, we will adjust expenses
and revenue to zero by appropriately crediting and debiting the income
summary and then closing the income summary to retained earnings (part
of equity)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping_system

Birger


On on., 2009-12-09 at 12:30 -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Parker Jones <zoubidoo at hotmail.com> writes:
> 
> > Thanks David, that does help a lot.    Especially the tip about reports.
> >
> > I can see a problem with my usage because my partner also uses the same
> > accounts.  She might occasionally make changes without realising that zeroing
> > transactions need updating and I might not notice her changes, thus leaving
> > the books out of sync.  I suppose I'll have to re-close books regularly to be
> > safe.
> 
> For the record, I never close the books.  I don't see a reason to.  All
> the reports are designed to handle periods, so really the only thing
> that closing the books gives you is the ability to look at the account
> balances in the Chart of Accounts to see this period's balance.  But if
> you use the reports for that info then you don't need to ever close the
> books.
> 
> -derek
>