Close books trashes Income Statement and Net Income on Balance Sheet

[Derek Atkins]

JT Morée <moreejt at yahoo.com> writes:

>> "calendar" allowed for the special date "year end". In other
>> words, we could insert a date in between two (real) calendar
>> dates that fell after the first but before the second. Think
>> of it as a December 32 or a Jan 0
>> 
>> Not an easy problem for GnuCash (no way of knowing what the
>> user's "fiscal year" might be)
>> 
>> Michael D Novack, FLMI
>
> I am not an accountant but I disagree that the best solution is to create a fake date or reserve a real date.

You can disagree all you want, but you're still wrong. ;) The GAAP
method to close the books is to create a fake date (or 'invalid' date)
that sits between the periods.  That's what most accountants and
large-scale accounting programs do.  You might dislike it, but it's the
way the world works.

> I realize my post was long but in short I believe the best solution is to have the reports be smarter.  It's not difficult (almost done in fact) and it avoids the fiscal year problem you mention. 

This is only part of the solution.  There isn't really enough
information in the current data.  We would really need an actual period
indicator in order to indicate which period a transaction belongs to.

> JT

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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