Questions About Balance Sheet and Income Statement

[Mark Phillips]

Amazing....the article in the link you posted is what I read to give me the
idea for closing the books on 12/31/2012.

Thanks!

Mark
Sent from my Android phone.
On Apr 7, 2013 9:38 AM, "denbigh1974" <denbigh1974 at gmx.net> wrote:

> Mark Phillips wrote
> >> Or, should I delete all the 2011 and 2012 transactions, the above
> >> Adjustment to expense, and change the opening balance for the checkbook
> >> to
> >> be the correct value for 12/31/12?
>
> If you entered two months of data to get an initial feel for monthly
> expenses and income, I guess that the data would probably not be of much
> comparative use now if it's two years old? Why not just start again from
> 01/01/13 while retaining your accounts structure but with everything zeroed
> (and then enter the 01/01/13 opening balances from your bank statements)?
>
> There is quite a good solution explained here:
> http://www.gssezisoft.com/main/2011/08/gnucash-and-end-of-year/
> <http://www.gssezisoft.com/main/2011/08/gnucash-and-end-of-year/>
>
>
> Mark Phillips wrote
> > I think I figured it out. I just closed the books on 12/31/12 and put all
> > the expenses and income transactions into the opening balances for the
> > checkbook, and now on Jan 31 the retained earnings is equal to the profit
> > for the month of January.
>
> Looks fine. That seems to be another way of reaching the starting point
> suggested above.
>
> Personally, the retained losses/profits figure has never been useful for my
> domestic finances since it is an aggregate figure from the day I first
> started logging my income/expenses - quite an arbitrary date. I can see
> that
> it might be useful if you were running a business though and wanted to
> declare a dividend, say.
>
> Disclaimer - I'm still learning about the correct procedures to use myself.
> The only thing which jumped out from your posts was making adjustment
> entries in your Equity accounts. My understanding is that you use this
> account only for your opening balances for every bank account. Then you
> must
> never open the Equity box again!
>
> I haven't ever closed my books. Every transaction from day one of using
> Gnucash is still visible. I just alter the Accounting Period in Preferences
> if I want to analyse data from a specific period. I can see that this might
> not be an acceptable way of keeping data for an external accountant though.
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Questions-About-Balance-Sheet-and-Income-Statement-tp4661082p4661094.html
> Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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