[Bulk] Re: new user of Gnucash - questions

[John Ralls]

On Mar 26, 2011, at 6:58 PM, Diann wrote:

> Well, it seems this has been an active topic!  I certainly do appreciate all
> comments, and truly, your input is great and I'm learning...  Our law firm
> is little - one attorney and one employee.  Ever hear of such a thing?!
> Last year we had a major computer crash and the backup DVDs did not work.
> Our computer tech was able to restore a good bit of data from the damaged
> hard drive.  I was able to finish out the year with our accounting program
> at that time - PCLaw Accounting for Attorneys.  There were some hiccups,
> though, one of which was that I lost the ability to close out at "end of
> month", and therefore was unable to close out the accounting year.  We have
> lost confidence in that accounting program and in searching for something
> more update and perhaps with more friendly user ability, I chose Gnucash
> (through our tech's searching and downloading it onto my office desktop).  I
> like it, and do want to continue using it.  I just may have to get use to
> doing things differently, such as no more close outs.  I do the bookkeeping
> and record keeping throughout the year, including payroll, and then we turn
> over our business records to an accountant for end of year journal entries,
> and for tax preparations.

That should be a fine use of Gnucash. As Derek and Elizabeth pointed out, there's no real need to do a formal "close"
every month. You might want to look at the "reconcile" function to make sure that your bank account statements match up with your books; the rest you can handle with reports.  You can do an annual "close" if you like having the expense and income accounts' totals equal the current year's totals, but that's about all it's good for. You should probably get together with the accountant well in advance of the end of the year to make sure that you have the necessary reports set up the way s/he wants them so that it's not a flap at tax-time.

Regards,
John Ralls