Balance sheet after using "Close book"?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Soren Hansen wrote:

>Hi.
>
>I'm wanting to create a balance sheet of some sort, so that I can see
>the totals of each of my accounts at the end of last year. The balance
>sheet does that, but if I've used the "Close book" functionality, all
>the accounts' totals will be 0. Is there a way to generate a balance
>sheet that somehow "subtracts" the transactions generated by "Close
>Book"? I'm using gnucash 2.2.9.
>
>  
>
Soren,
    Something very wrong here. A "Balance Sheet" report  should be 
showing  just the "standing accounts" (types asset, liability, equity) 
and not the temporary accounts of types like "income" and "expense" that 
were zeroed out by the close the books operation. When you run a 
"Balance Sheet" report before closing the books the NET of all the 
temporary accounts of equity (income and expense accounts) appears as 
net gain of loss for the period.

   Did you mean that you wanted an Income Statement from before you 
closed the books? That's easy. Just make the effective end date of that 
report immediately before the date of the close the books. There IS (can 
be) a problem and it has been discussed. If your fiscal activity takes 
place every day of the year the lack of a "day that is not a day" to use 
for the date to close the books is an annoyance. In the case of my 
organizations I can assign Jan 1 to that purpose (any "bank holiday" 
would do) simply by choosing not to write any checks with that date --- 
so for my organizations no outside fiscal activity takes place Jan 1.

Michael D Novack, FLMI

-- 
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.