close books

[Fred Bone]

On 30 November 2010 at 11:43, Dennis Powless said:

> I've went into each of the expense accounts and entered a zero out
> transaction to equity:retained earnings for each year.  This, from
> what I've been reading is similar to closing the books.  And quite
> reversible if I ever should need to use that data for reports.  Is
> this acceptable and will it mess things up in other areas?  

That is exactly what the "close books" action does.

> Now, what do I
> do about the huge equity accounts?  Do the same to those?  Zero them out
> somehow.

You don't want to zero the equity accounts. They represent your current 
position, or at least your position as at last time you closed the books.

(Well, you might want to enter transfers among them, reducing some sub-
accounts to zero, to simplify the picture, but that's not quite the same 
thing).