advice please: end of year

[Ken Heard]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Laura Lincoln wrote:

> You don't need to open up a new set of accounts for each month/year/quarter.
> As long as you tell the software what your fiscal year is then the software
> *should* do your reports correctly. It should automatically roll your prior
> year Net income into Retained Earnings automatically for you. I'm new to GC
> but that is what general accounting software should do automatically for
> you. If it does not then hopefully someone will come along and correct me.
> And if it does not then I will be looking for another accounting program for
> my client.

I should certainly *not* expect any accounting applications to close a
year automatically on the last day of the year.  Gnucash follows the
norm and requires manual intervention to close the year.  I have yet to
close a year, but I expect "Tools>Close book" will close all income and
expense accounts to a specified retained earnings, surplus of equity
account on the specified year end date.

It *never* happens that all entries for the closing year are all
finished by the date of closing.  Tax payments and remittances are
examples of such entries.  Annual reports have to be completed before
"closing the book", but these can be prepared from the back-up of each year.

Regards, Ken Heard

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAknuaGUACgkQlNlJzOkJmTfemQCdFoX+Baju6XIObWJCDVy0YaOB
HecAn20xfT4gdFKqTw2txVHxylgZ7TLl
=mN5X
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----