Year End procedure (tutorial)

Paul Lussier pll@mclinux.com
Fri, 15 Feb 2002 13:31:32 -0500


In a message dated: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 13:17:58 EST
Charles Gagnon said:

>I am looking for simple procedure, "tutorialesque", on how to close the books
>w/ Gnucash 1.6. I KNOW it is currently a time consuming manual procedure but I
>would like to try it just for shits and giggles. I remember it involving
>transfering all the Income/Expense balances to an Equity account but I can't
>quite nail it.

Well, maybe "official" accounting procedures require you to transfer 
everything to an equity account, but I don't think it's really 
necessary.

What I'm planning on doing is this:

	1. Open up GNUCash with last years account file
	2. Save this file under a new name
	   (or, you could just cp last_year.xac this_year.xac)
	3. In last year's file, make sure everything is reconciled,
	   delete all transactions which are dated after 31 Dec 2001.
	4. Open up 'this_year.xac' and delete everything that's 
	   *before* 01 Jan 2002.
	5. Create opening balances within each account dated 01 Jan 
	   2002 which transfers *from* the equity account the same
	   amount that was left in the account in 'last_year.xac'

At that point you should be done, in theory.

Hope that helps.
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
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