Starting a new year

[Maf. King]

On Sunday 20 Apr 2008, Manfred Jung wrote:
> 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?
>

Hi,

I have kept a single file for my business, which now contains 5 years of data 
in an approx. 20 Meg file (uncompressed).  The reports are generally slow to 
generate now, but I don't see any noticeable speed impact in day-to-day 
transaction entering.

My personal accounts run as one file per year, mostly out of habit from years 
ago.  I'm not that bothered about comparing personal expenditure year on 
year.

> 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?

You create a transaction in each account that shows a balance - the other 
account is (usually) Equity:Opening Balances.  Yes, it is a bit of a pain, 
but it is only a few extra transactions per year.  You'll also need to 
recreate any scheduled transactions you may have, as I don't believe the 
exporter copies those details.

> 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.

Correct - there is no way to merge GC files / import a GC file into a new 
file, AFAIK.  I do believe that the QIF importer will create any required new 
accounts if they don't already exist in the "empty" datafile.

>
> 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.

Yep, that is what I do for my personal data.
>
> Is the general practice really just to leave all transactions in there
> year after year?

Yep, this is what I do for my business data!

HTH,
Maf.