Starting a new year

[Manfred Jung]

Thanks for your kind answer and the answers form others.  I am learning 
as I go along.

If as you suggest close the book, keep the transactions in GnuCash and 
continue with a new accounting period I would over the years get a huge 
file with all previous years data. Although that might be beneficial for 
lookup purposes would it not  eventually become slow, cumbersome and 
ineffective to keep old transactions. Is it not a better practice to 
have one file (set of books) per year or per accounting period?

This is at least what triggered my question.

Further, if I understand correctly, when I export the accounts (File --> 
Accounts) how would I be able to change opening balances on some of the 
accounts?
I also found no way of importing a Accounts file. it seem there are only 
qif and other files that can be imported ant that only into an existing 
set of accounts? But maybe I am not getting something here that is quite 
fundamental.

My current solution would be to recreate every year from scratch the set 
of accounts and set the opening balances in the Bank account, pety cash 
and other assets etc.

Is the general practice really just to leave all transactions in there 
year after year?

Thanks for any further insight.

I must say I like GnuCash more and more. Again thanks for the friendly 
support.
Regards

Derek Atkins wrote:
> hi,
>
> Quoting Manfred Jung <mjung at ccm.org.za>:
>
>> Hi I'm new to GnuCash, yet I have entered one financial year worth of
>> transactions in the program. Now I have to start the new year. I
>> seareche for documentation all afternoon but seem not to find what I 
>> need.
>>
>> Some how it must produce a new file with the old balances but without
>> the transactions. How to do that. I tried to export the accounts but
>> then there are no opening balances. I have tried to "close book" but
>> then the old transacctions are still there.
>
> Why do you feel you need this?  GnuCash is perfectly happy to report
> purely on the year, so unless you have a specific reason there's no
> cause to start a new file every year.  You are correct that the current
> book closing is just a simple helper to zero-ize the Income and Expense
> accounts, but it does not remove the transaction history.
>
>> Can someone please point me to the right way of doing this.
>
> If you REALLY want to start a new file you can File -> Export Accounts
> and then reset the balances manually.  But this only exports accounts.
> Nothing else.
>
>> Any help is much appreciated.
>
>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
> -derek
>

-- 
Manfred Jung
CCM-Services
Tel     +27 11 976-4044
Fax     +27 11 976-4042
email   mjung at ccm.org.za