Year's end, file size an issue?

[Derek Atkins]

Jeff et al,

Jeff Kletsky <gnucash at allycomm.com> writes:

> I have to say I'm glad I have 11 months to figure out what to do at
> year-end. Closing out the books is a lot more "obvious" when the
> records are on a piece of paper. There, at the bottom of one page, are
> the totals for the accounts on the end of the last day of the
> year. Nice. Then, on the same day, but on the next page of the books,
> are a bunch of transactions that just roll up the account totals. So,
> at the bottom of that page, the accounts show year-end totals, with
> zero balances on the income/expense accounts.
>
> Then came computers.
>
> Now where is that "extra page" in the books?
>
> If I close my books on 12/31, then any report I run for last year has
> the year-end roll-up transactions included. Hmmm, in December, I go
> from 11 months' accumulated in Income:Salary to zero on the 31st. So
> my income for the month of December is a big negative number?
[snip]

In thinking about this, I think it would be relatively simple to add a
new set of columns that compute Period Balances.  It takes the current
column algorithms and computes the balances as the appropriate date for
the column ('today' or 'forever in the future')..  and then computes the
same balance at the start of the period and then subtracts the two to
compute the period balance.

Implementing this would be a good introduction project if someone wants
to get their feet wet.

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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