close books

[John A. Mason]

You know I never made that connection.... January 1 is already a holiday, so no bank account or statement should have Jan 1 listed with any transactions! I wouldn't have to move any transactions around or reschedule transfers to keep Dec 31 clean, I could just use Jan 1! brilliant!
> I would however in time like to remove from main file all the
> transactions older than two years, and thereby reduce its size.   In
> sqlite would it be possible to do easily, as I understand is what you
> are suggesting in the last sentence of your post quoted above?

The sqlite format means it is stored in a SQL-based database accessible file, thanks to the sqlite database engine. So thus, all it takes is a quick brush up on your SQL syntax and you can use the sqlite tools to do almost anything you want to the entries. And yes, that is what I do about every 6 months. I have a quick sql statement I run that makes a new record in all expense, income, etc. accounts with the TOTAL of all previous entries to that date, then it removes all the old transactions. That way I can still keep the running totals going, but I don't have to worry about anything getting too big. But note: I don't do this for a long time AFTER I close the period. For some of of the books I do, I close the periods each month... but I don't do any clearing for anything younger than say, 5 years.

> Another useful enhancement would be ability to retain somewhere in the
> main file only the closing balances of each account at the end of each
> fiscal year to use in reports for comparisons between years and in
> budget preparation.

The Close Books tool doesn't remove any transactions. All it does is add a new transaction to EVERY expense and income account to offset the balance to zero on that date. In other words, Let's say you have an expense account called XYZ with 50 transactions totaling $5,000. Then let's say you also have an income account called ABC with 40 transactions totaling $8,000. After you run Close Books, there will 51 and 41 transactions respectably in these accounts, and BOTH accounts would show a balance of $0.00 on the close date. The other side of the transactions would be feeding into the accounts you specify at close. For me, I use a combined "Retained Earnings" account. This account would have a new transaction (split) that would show a total of $3,000 added equity. (8k income - 5k expense = 3k retained earnings). That way all the expense/income accounts still show ALL their history, but they have a new starting balance of $0.00 for the new fiscal period.

-- 
John A. Mason
Director Systems Administration
The Mason Family of Companies