close books

[Ken Heard]

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David T. wrote:
>> But including the zeroing transaction in any report will throw your numbers off. If you have $1200 of Electric expenses in 2009, you will have a $1200 zeroing transaction on January 1 (or December 31, etc.), which will throw off the figure for the month of which it is a part. Month to month, you'll have $100--until that ZTM (zeroing transaction month), when you'll have -$1100. Yuck.

How?  If for example the opening balance as of 1 January is $1200, and
on that day you zero the income and expense accounts, the account
balance at the end of that day will be zero.  Then if on 15 January you
pay the electric bill of $100, and if there are no other entries except
those made on those dates, the balance as of 31 January will be $100.
Consequently any report which includes this account made to show the 31
January position will show the balance of $100.  A report of the
transactions in that account for the month of January will show the
zeroing, but the explanation of the $1200 entry on 1 January is obvious.

>> To give the usual line, with a little character: "if you build it, they will come." Gnucash reporting is based on Scheme, where (I am told) you can slice, dice and even julienne your data to your heart's content. Unfortunately, no one has sliced or diced the data into such a report as of yet. 
> 
>> It would seem to me that it might be possible to build a report that included a Zeroing Date option; said option would specify which date should be removed from reports, thus restoring sanity when you've Zeroed your expense and income accounts. As I am not the Scheming type (I might even go so far as to add that I am Guile-less), please don't wait for me to code the solution. I am not a programmer.

I would characterize report preparation in gnucash a work in progress.
Not being a programmer I am baffled by it; I hope something simpler will
be developed in time.

Ken Heard
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