Alternate book closing with reconcile and retention of memorized transactions.

[Timothy J. Miller]

This idea occurred to me on the way to work, and I can see no reason why
it wouldn't work as I expect.  Since I'd been holding off on closing my
2001 books, I'll try this method just to see.

Basically, hold your old books open and work with gnucash normally until
all transactions in the to-be-closed period are reconciled.  For
example, I'll keep my 2001 books open, adding 2002 transactions, until
my Jan 02 statements come in, at which point I'll reconcile normally.

Once all transactions in the closing period are reconciled, save the
books and copy them to a new file.  Open this file and *delete* all
transactions-- including reconciled ones-- from the new period. 
Continuing my above example, I'll copy my gnucash file, "books", to a
new file, "2001-books".  Then I'll open "2001-books" and delete all
transactions from 2002.

Make a note of all closing balances, save and close the file.

Now open your current set and delete all transactions from the period
just closed.  Finally, add new Opening Balances entries using the values
that you noted previously.  So having deleted all 2002 transactions from
the 2001 books, I'll note my closing balances and open the current set
(file "books"), and delete all 2001 transactions.  And to end, I'll
enter the closing balances of "2001-books" as the opening balances for
"books".

Cumbersome, yes.  But it should ease reconciliation (since it puts off
actually closing a set of books until all the transactions in that time
period are reconciled), and it should retain memorized transactions in
the new set.  And it should work, at least until actual closing is
supported natively.

Comments?

-- Cerebus