Year end procedure...

Ken Heard ken at heard.name
Sun Jan 3 20:44:49 EST 2010


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Ken G. wrote:
> Well, I just closed out my Book for the year of 2009.  I was somewhat
> surprised to see the register are still hanging around from last year. 
> I may have wrongly assumed they would disappeared.  Is that normal?

First I assume by "register" you are referring to all the journal
entries made in the previous year.  A proper year-end procedure should
completely clear out *all* the entries in income and expense accounts.
It does not seem that the GnuCash year end closing procedure does so.
Even if all the all those accounts are "zeroed" the accumulation of
several years worth of now redundant entries will ultimately take up a
lot of drive space.

I have yet to do in GnuCash a year end closing -- 2009 was the first
year I have used it, but this is what I would expect.  My year closes on
31 December, but it usually takes about four months after the end of the
year for all entries for the year to be closed to be finished.  In the
meantime I continue to make entries in the new year.

When I am satisfied with all the old year entries, I archive the files
in a new directory.  These files serve as the permanent record of
transactions for the old year and serve as the basis for reports about
that year, other than the end-of-year balance sheet.

Then on the unarchived files I would run the closing routine, which I
expect would delete all income and expense entries in set up the profit
and loss account and the net worth entries for the year.  Then I would
archive the files again in still another directory to provide the
financial picture as of the last day of the year, because as the new
year progresses the balance sheet items change -- investments, accounts
receivable and payable, etc.

Ken Heard






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