year-ends

[jovo at knoware.nl]

Aanhalen Adam Rosi-Kessel <adam at rosi-kessel.org>:

> Jeremy Harris wrote:
> > It sounds like the common method of handling a year-end
> > is to transfer balances from all the Expense and Income
> > accounts into Equity:Retained Earnings.
> > If I want to do it (especially keeping each year separate)
> > it sounds like a real drag creating all the subaccounts.
> > Is there an easy, even a one-click, way of copying an
> > account tree to another parent and transferring all the
> > balances?
> 
> The only way I've figured out how to do it is adding a transaction to
> each account individually, one at a time. I agree that it is a drag.

You might have a look at the following Perl script:
http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2005-February/012821.html

Using the scripts method you don't have to close books but compress older
transactions into aggregated ones.
It is not heavily tested but I myself use it to archive books older than three years.

> I actually transfer all of my expenses to an "old expenses" expense
> account,
> and all of my income to an "old income" income account, with one
> transaction
> per account. I am curious if there is any particular reason why
> Equity:Retained Earnings makes more sense than having "old income" and
> "old expenses"?
> Adam