"Close Books" revisited - was Re: Account Balances Louse-up? .

[Derek Atkins]

Felix Karpfen <felix.karpfen at gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 4:23 PM, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Ooh, it sounds like you made some work for yourself. The Close Books routine just creates a big Zeroing Transaction as of a given date;
>
> This time round I really want to invoke "Close Books"; 30 June is the
> end of our Financial Year!
>
> When clicking on the "Close Books" option, I get a little window with
> default entries that reads currently:
>
> Income Total :  Equity
> Expense Total: Equity
>
> Other options are available - e.g. I could select "Equity:Opening
> Balances" or create a new account.
>
> Before I <accept|change> the offered option, I would really like to
> know what I am being offered.  I have saved a copy of the current data
> as a separate file and would like to start the new Financial Year with
> zero entries in the Income and Expense accounts in the gnucash file
> that I use on a daily basis.

It will create two transactions to zeroize all your Income and Expense
accounts as of the closing date.  The dialog is asking you what accounts
you want to use for the Equity side of those monster transactions.

> I hope this query makes sense; my knowledge of accounting practice is
> close to zero and I have failed to find any relevant entries in the
> GnuCash Manual.
>
> All advice will be gratefully received.
>
> Felix Karpfen

-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
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available