[GNC-dev] [GNC] Recording dividend payoffs

Justin Mathew mjustin at protonmail.com
Wed Apr 17 12:03:46 EDT 2019


Just to add to it,

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retained_earnings: The retained earnings
> of a corporation is the accumulated net income of the corporation that
> is retained by the corporation at a particular point of time, such as at
> the end of the reporting period. ...
>
> https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/retained-earnings:
> the part of a company’s profit in a particular period that it decides to
> keep, rather than paying it to shareholders as a dividend

And at some point if dividends are paid to shareholders, the retained earning should account for that as well.

Many at time, small businesses pay dividends as a method of steady income to shareholders. They don't divide the entire profit though. Hence the business will still have retained earnings after dividends.

-
Regards,
Justin Mathew
mjustin at protonmail.com

Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Wednesday, April 17, 2019 8:37 PM, Frank H. Ellenberger <frank.h.ellenberger at gmail.com> wrote:

> John,
>
> the issue is not about reports or accounts, but the term "retained
> earnings". While for the "normal" private user (and our original
> programmers) it may be seen as synonym for "net income", for business
> users it is more specific: The amount of the net income, which is for
> several reasons (juristic, ...) transferred to the next period.
>
> Example: There is a pending discussion with a client about the quality
> of our sold product. He claims his money back.
>
> IMHO we should rename, what currently is called "retained earnings" in
> GnuCash to "net income". I have no specific opinion about the account
> names in our english and norsk templates .
>
> My estimation is based on
> https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/retained earnings
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retained_earnings: The retained earnings
> of a corporation is the accumulated net income of the corporation that
> is retained by the corporation at a particular point of time, such as at
> the end of the reporting period. ...
>
> https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/retained-earnings:
> the part of a company’s profit in a particular period that it decides to
> keep, rather than paying it to shareholders as a dividend
>
> Regards
> Frank
>
> Am 17.04.19 um 01:24 schrieb John Ralls:
>
> > Justin,
> > No, just you. This is real simple: GnuCash provides two ways to account for reporting retained earnings, including dividends. I'm not asking you to do anything, I'm telling you how GnuCash works. Either you use one of those two ways or you use a different accounting program.
> > Regards,
> > John Ralls




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