Opening a New Account with Existing Retained Earnings

Roger aretae at magma.ca
Sun Oct 25 23:43:48 EDT 2009


Clearly, I am missing something.  I have entered my pre-existing assets 
and used "Opening Balance" for the double-entry.  It seems to me the 
"Opening Balance" is the same as or is a main contributor to "Retained 
Earnings from Previous Year"  but it isn't all of it.  For example, I 
don't know how to account for all of the Retained Earnings which are say 
accumulated from 10 years ago.

In Simply Accounting there is an account "Retained Earnings from 
Previous Year" which seems to sum all of the previous retained earnings.

I guess since

A = L + (E + RE)

I could add some dummy account under Assets that would be half the 
double-entry or, essentially, the Retained Earnings from previous years.

I have spent months now, off and on, trying to set my Retained Earnings 
from Previous Year to the same as in Simply Accounting.  If I can't do 
that then I am not sure I can move to Gnucash, which is something I 
really want to do as I don't want to deal with SA any longer.  I need to 
have SA and Gnucash identical at the beginning of this fiscal year and 
it isn't and it is the Retained Earnings that is screwing me up.

I am sure I can "fudge" something but I thought this is something that 
is often done and there would be some sort of accepted procedure for 
"switching" to Gnucash.  I sure don't find this straight forward, for 
me, it is very frustrating.


Roger


Paul Schwartz wrote:
> With your newly created retained Earnings account, you can enter your pre-existing assets, debiting one and crediting the other. That's double entry book keeping.
>
> HTH
>
> Paul
>
> --- On Sun, 10/25/09, Roger <aretae at magma.ca> wrote:
>
>   
>> From: Roger <aretae at magma.ca>
>> Subject: Opening a New Account with Existing Retained Earnings
>> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> Date: Sunday, October 25, 2009, 9:02 AM
>> I have asked similar questions before
>> but have yet to get an answer that I understand, so I tried
>> just starting an account from scratch.  I am using
>> 2.3.7 and started by setting up a new account assuming that
>> I have Retained Earnings from previous years.
>>
>> So, I thought what I wanted to do was simply put an Opening
>> Balance for Retained Earnings in the Setup New Account
>> wizard but it is grayed out not allowing me to make any
>> entry.
>>
>> What is the detailed (step-by-step) recommended procedure
>> to get Gnucash to set an opening balance for Retained
>> Earnings?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>  Roger
>>
>>
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