Old Loans and "Retained Earnings"

[Roland Roberts]

I was sure this was discussed at some point, but can't find it in the
archives.

I'm converting from Quicken to GnuCash 1.4.  I have some old loans
where, in Quicken, they simply had an "initial balance" shown.
Quicken sets this up as going to a "Retained Earnings" asset account.
Now that would be fine if it weren't for one little problem: the loans
were student loans and the cash went to educational expenses in a
period preceding what is covered by either Quicken or GnuCash.

So, I have these funny-looking balances which say I have a lot of
money in "Retained Earnings".  How can I do this so it more closely
resembles reality?  Do I need to add some old/bogus expenses "college
tuition" to make the entries go away?

A related question is, if I should decide to close out the books at
the end of the year and start a new set, the GnuCash way is to
transfer your account balances to an asset account and then back out.
What does this look like for loan (liability) balances?  Same thing
except the balances are of the opposite sign?

roland
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Roland B. Roberts, PhD                             RL Enterprises
roland@rlenter.com                     76-15 113th Street, Apt 3B
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