closing out accounts

[Alan Cheilek]

One more issue here -- I have accounts in two countries (US and UK,
but the principle holds more generally).  By default, the US uses a
calendar tax year, and the UK tax year runs from 6 April through the
following 5 April.

In my situation there can be tax consequences in either country (or
both) for individual transactions in a given account.  But the tax
years in which they might apply is not congruent.

I don't have a good idea on how to handle this from either a data
structure or a user interface point of view, but closing books on 31
December is unlikely to be it...  So far, I (by hand) allocate
transactions appropriately and generate summaries for each country
which I use to fill in the appropriate tax returns.

Cheers,

-Alan


Greg Wilkins <gregw@mortbay.com> writes:

> There was some discussion about a year back about this feature - but
> I don't think many were convinced that it is needed and I have
> seen no progress on it.
>
> I'd like to re-affirm my need for such a mechanism to scrub out old
> transactions from my running accounts.
>
> Just to repeat the reasons for not just opening a new set of accounts
> for each financial year:
>
>   + Around the end of the year, the accounts are often fluid and
>     entries may move back of forth accross the bounds of a financial
>     year.
>
>   + In places where the company financial year is not the same as
>     the personal financial year (eg) it is good to be able to
>     hold last years accounts so reports can be generated over various
>     periods.   But the year before last is just noise.
>
>   + The best way to ensure that this year starts from the right
>     balances is to use last years records exactly.
>
> Note that I think there is a related problem with the balance sheet
> report.  For profit, it uses the profit from day 1 of the accounts.
> For proper accounting, you want the profit shown on the report
> to be the same for the FY profit/loss report.   A roll over mechanism
> could allow the balance sheet to distinguish between retained profits
> and current profits.
>
> regards
>
>
>
> -- 
> Greg Wilkins<gregw@mortbay.com>                http://www.mortbay.com
> Mort Bay Consulting Pty. Ltd. AU.                    +61(0)29977 2395
> Mort Bay Consulting Limited. England UK.             +44(0)7092063462
>
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