Close books trashes Income Statement and Net Income on Balance Sheet
Mike or Penny Novack
stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com
Mon Feb 8 18:33:05 EST 2010
>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.
>
Maybe needs more explanation? The reason many of you see "fake" is that
you assumed that a "fiscal date" HAD to be a "calendar date". Or where
the same data as calendar date is used for fiscal date assumed that
meant they had magically become the some thing.
The properties you NEED for fiscal dates:
a) Unique.
b) Ordered
Imagine the following rules:
a) The ID of a an ordinary fiscal date will be the calendar date. All
fiscal transactions will occur on an ordinary fiscal date.
b) The ID of a special fiscal date will be the ID of the preceding
(ordinary) fiscal date with a "S" appended. No fiscal transactions
allowed on a special fiscal date, just things like closing the books.
c) Only transactions occurring on ordinary fiscal dates are considered
in reports.
Michael D. Novack, FLMI
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