Year-End solutions

ted creedon tcreedon at easystreet.com
Thu Mar 31 10:57:29 EST 2005


My accountant suggests one file per year. The double entry report is
impressive.
Also easier to  maintain the data. I ran a number of test cases on a year's
data, very convenient.
tedc

-----Original Message-----
From: gnucash-user-bounces at gnucash.org
[mailto:gnucash-user-bounces at gnucash.org] On Behalf Of Beth Leonard
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 2:17 AM
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Year-End solutions

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_s
upport.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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