How to close an accounting year and open a new accounting year

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>Technically there is nothing you need to do to "close the books".  Indeed,
>there is no requirement (from GnuCash) that do you so, and GnuCash even
>helps you without closing the books.  All you need to do is run an Income
>Statement over your period and a Balance Sheet at your closing date.  Et
>Viola, you have all the data you need for the period.
>
>You *can* run the Tools-> Close Books tools if you really want to zeroize
>your income and expense accounts, but there is no need or requirement to
>do this.
>
>There is no tool to create a new file from the existing file with account
>opening balances.
>
>Hope this helps.
>  
>
But if you WANT to (you might want to be able to easily see 
income/expense balances for the new accounting period as you work 
without running a report)

1) At the end of the accounting period make a copy of the "books" file 
to save the old year. There's not a tool WITHIN gnucash to do that but 
you do know how to copy files, yes? That will allow you later to run 
reports for the previous accounting period unaffected by the "close the 
books". You don't HAVE to do it this way since gnucash will allow 
running the reports without the "close the books" transactions but 
ideally you want a clean backup in any case (burn that old year file and 
send one copy the CD/DVD to a safe location).

2) Close the books as of the last date of the previous accounting 
period. Remember, if you NOW need to rerun reports for the previous 
period you either have to remember to exclude the "close the books" 
transactions OR use the copy* of the previous period that you kept on site.

If this seems strange to you (making backups, sending copies off site, 
etc.) that's a matter of your not being accustomed to proper backup 
procedures. Best to learn these BEFORE having a disaster (computer dies, 
house fire, etc.)

Michael D Novack, FLMI

Michael D Novack

* You burn the copy you send off site but your on site copy might be on 
the USB drive, etc. that you use for your normal backups. Could even 
leave a copy suitably renamed in the usual directory. For example, I do 
ALL of those things (the burned copy goes to another officer of the 
organization and among other things can serve as a check that the data 
has not been altered).