Year End procedure (tutorial)

Christian Stimming stimming@tuhh.de
Fri, 15 Feb 2002 23:28:13 +0100


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Friday 15 February 2002 19:31, Paul Lussier wrote:
> 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 would basically agree with Paul, but add/modify two steps:

> 	1. Open up GNUCash with last years account file

Another step 1(b) here:
* Create one transaction for each non-zero Asset/Liability account from this 
account to an equity account "Year XX closing balance". Note that this 
concerns only Assets and Liabilities, NOT Income/Expense accounts. 

> 	2. Save this file under a new name

No, I'd rather use the function "Export accounts..." under the "File" menu. 
This creates you a file with the same account structure but without any 
transactions (which you won't have to delete, then). 

Thinking about it more, it seems like exporting the accounts is suited to a 
"real" book closure at the turn of the year. Whereas if you want to *split* 
an existing book which spans several years, you probably better copy the 
existing file and delete the non-suiting transactions.

> 	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.

The last two steps only make sense if there already were any transactions not 
belonging into the year of choice, as would be the case in the "book 
splitting" task. 

> 	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'

I'd say it this way: Now you would need to create the mirror transactions to 
those that you made in step 1(b). I.e., from the equity account "Year xx 
opening balance", you create one transaction to each nonzero asset/liability 
account, so that your balance sheet on Jan 1st looks pretty much the same as 
the one on Dec 31st.

Christian
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.5 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iQCVAwUBPG2LfWXAi+BfhivFAQGg6gP+L4BHapL7ebhVl/VFTi/YapKdV2KmLtwf
zinmsVjIY2hmHH4mQ3w7BsNy6RVZK55+qzt3XJ89YIr1mQLENDAGYW+CNK/Pz0Hp
Y4nUPwd4gnYYWKMK5npFM89oEWTnf/KSMAW2PtbjsccU+cDY0j2wAi9J5CVSGovI
8mdIccpLyeI=
=RJNM
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----