Closing accounts.

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Daniel Carrera wrote:

>Hello,
>
>As time goes by I close old bank accounts and open new ones. These bank 
>accounts remain in GnuCash. I don't want to lose the history associated 
>with those accounts, but I also don't want them showing up on my account 
>list since they don't exist anymore. In a similar way, you could have an 
>expense account (e.g. an insurance) which you'd want to close (cancel 
>the insurance). There's a personal loan as well, which was settled last 
>November, but it still shows up in my Gnucash.
>
>These accounts end up polluting my account list. All in all I have 4-5 
>accounts that I would like to hide or close. In the coming years more 
>accounts will be closed.
>
>Is there a way to close or hide some accounts in GnuCash?
>
>I could just delete them and dump everything in "Equity", but that would 
>destroy the history. Any ideas?
>  
>
a) Never a need to "dump into equity" if the account is closed (zero 
balance)
b) Hiding isn't that difficult. For each account "class" (asset, 
liability, etc.) in which you have closed accounts you create a 
sub-parent with a suggestive name like "closed" or "historical" or 
whatever you like. You move the closed accounts there (under that 
parent) and you don't expand the view of that parent. But you can get at 
them any time you need to review the history.

Michael