two instances of gnucash?

[Maf. King]

On Tuesday 09 Nov 2004 06:19, andy thomas wrote:

> Out of interest, what is the "official" gnucash way to close out accounts
> at the end of an accounting year and then begin another year's accounts,
> carrying over the same account tree and balances?
>

Errrm, there isn't one.  This crops up on the list every so often, and the 
world seems to have two halves - those that don't close out, so that the 
reports can show multiple years of data (or just current year depending on 
settings), and those that want to close out, to keep things tidy, to keep 
data files smaller, because it feels "right" (maybe that is a "UK"-thing?)

> As far as I can see, this can all be done manually but I'm not aware of
> any neat facililty within gnucash to do this and I'm not sure copying the
> XML files to a new set and editing out last year's transactions, etc is
> the best way.


What you can do is something like file -> export -> export accounts, which 
will give you an empty account tree.  You just then manually go through and 
put in loads of transactions to equity:opening balances  for all your 
accounts which need to carry a value forward ( probably just asset and 
liability accounts, IIUC, the whole point is that income & expesnes start 
from 0).  However, if you do this, you will lose all your A/P, A/R customers 
and scheduled transaction info.  IMHO, the copy XML, delete transactions is 
the only way to go.

*discalimer* I have closed out my personal accounts using the blank tree 
method several times over the years, but for that, I have only a few SXes and 
no AP, AR info.  I haven't closed out the business accounts yet, although it 
is a job i will probably have to do sometime between now and Christmas.  I 
have been putting it off, coz it seems like way too much work.  But I have 
been _thinking_ about doing it.  What I am trying to say, is that there may 
be problems I don't know about doing the "delete transactions" step.

Maf.