Business: accounting for dividends

[Maf. King]

On Wednesday 08 October 2008 20:41:51 Graham Leggett wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am needing some pointers on how to account for dividends within
> gnucash, ie when closing off the previous year, declaring a dividend and
> starting the next year.
>
> Right now I created an equity account called "dividends" with
> transactions in it going to the loan accounts of the people that should
> be paid the dividends.
>
> The trouble is when I run a balance sheet for the following year, the
> dividends still show up on the balance sheet from the previous year, and
> the retained earnings figure is incorrect.
>
> The gnucash docs don't seem to include any information on what needs to
> be done to close off a year, ideally I don't want to open a whole new
> gnucash file for the new year if I can possibly avoid it as it makes
> data mining very difficult.
>
> Regards,
> Graham
> --

Isn't a didvidend payment recorded as a (post-tax) expense?
On the grounds that it is money being taken out of the business.

HTH,
Maf.

 



-- 
Maf. King
PGP Key fingerprint = 8D68 A91F 733B 2C1F 43B7  2B7C E591 E8E1 0DE7 C542