Profit and Loss Statement for Closed Books

[Colin Scott]

> Can anyone tell me how to produce a profit and loss statement for
> transactions before I closed books.
> 
> Everytime I go to reporting >> profit and loss, and select the 
> dates for the closed books it just produces a P&L with £0's

1.  The Answer

You need to ensure that you close the books on a date later than the last transaction of the old year, and earlier than the first transaction of the new year.  Usually this means that you have to tweak the dates of a couple of transactions.

2.  The Rant!

Some reports have account selection options that permit you to filter out transactions from selected accounts.  Unfortunately, P&L reports do not permit this.  If they did, you would be able to filter out transactions involving Equity accounts, and that would solve your problem more simply.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason for some of the differences between the various pre-defined reports.  It seems obvious to me that all reports should include the account filtering facility, and I have to say that it would be sensible if their operation were standardised and rationalised so that instead of looking like a rag-bag assortment of "good idea at the time" one-offs, they were look like a properly planned reporting suite.

Colin