Year-End solutions

Beth Leonard beth at oasis.slimy.com
Thu Mar 31 05:17:06 EST 2005


Hi,

I was trying to close out 2004 for my taxes when the tip of the
day for the irc chat came up.  I tried it out, but being midnight
I got no response, and I discovered the mailing list archives, it
looks like this has come up twice in the last month and the devels
are working on it, Thanks!

For right now, it looks like there are a few solutions:

1) Copy the whole file, and manually delete transactions that are not
in the year you care about.  It can be made easier by limiting the
date range of transactions displayed via View->Select Transactions ->
Set Range -> Date Range.

This gets tedious if you have a lot of transactions.  My RFE here
is to have a little "Do not ask me about this again this session" check-box
when I try to delete a transaction.  For safety, it should probably
be initialized to "ask" each time the register window for that
account is opened, but having that button would make deleting
large numbers of transactions a little easier.

2) Start each year with a fresh file each year, but the same account
names.  You do this with File->Export->Export Accounts.  There is a little
bit in the tutorial about this (Appendix B: FAQ B3.3) it tells the
"how" but not the "why" of why you want to do this.

This method has the advantage of not needing to start totally from
scratch each year, but the disadvantage of not preserving all of your
auto-completion information for transactions and imported data.

3) The method I decided to go with myself for this year is to create
a new account branch -- Expenses -> 2004 Year End
I took the totals for each category and manually added a transaction
on 12/31/04 that moved the total for 2004 to that account.  The
account report for that 2004 Year End register makes a nice summary
of the information I'm interested in.  If you want pie graphs of
your expenses, you just have to type in the date range from
1/1/04 to 12/30/04, and hopefully there are no major expenses on
12/31/04. [If someone knows of a better way to do this that wouldn't
mess up my 2005 totals, I'd love the feedback.]

I actually personally added 3 accounts under year-end: Fixed Expenses,
Discretionary expenses, and a middle category I couldn't think of
a good name for, so I called it Budget Expenses -- things we could
spend less on, but still have to spend some money on like electricity
and gas.  This way in the future I'll be able to make bar charts
of 2004 year end vs. 2005 year end etc.

I have no idea how accountants actually do this, but if anyone knows
I'd appreciate a pointer. 

====
I've been using gnucash to handle my checkbook since 2002, and I'd
like to say "Thank-you" to whoever wrote the tutorial and concepts
guide.  
====
Next question -- The FAQ says:
http://gnomesupport.org/wiki/index.php/GnuCashFaq#Q:_Is_there_book-closing_support.2C_yet.3F

  Q: Is there book-closing support, yet?

    A: There is some support in CVS, and we're curious to hear your
  feedback about it. A not-unreasonable work around is to copy your data
  file, and edit it to add zeroing transactions to each income/expense
  account. Also note that the reports should be able to provide accurate
  data even without zeroing transactions, so your P&L and Balance Sheet
  reports will still work. However your account balances won't show
  year-to-date.

What does this mean?

I use debian and it has been quite some time since I've compiled
something -- does trying out something from CVS mean installing
or compiling source from somewhere?  

As for hand-editing files to try that as a solution to the year-end
close out problem, I make it a point not to hand-edit data files for
my finances.  If I screw something up, I at least want the program
that made the files to still be able to read them.

Are my sets of solutions above the type of thing that I should add
to the FAQ?  I see there is a edit button... I'm not sure of the
norms of this community yet as to what I should add.

<stalling... I really should be sorting through the foot-high stack
of paperwork and finishing my taxes>

--Beth 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+                             Beth Leonard                          +
+       O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave              +
+       O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?        +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


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