End of year - P&L reports include the closing transaction so everything is NIL

[David Ryan]

I'm using 2.4.11 on Windows for personal (i.e. non-business 
transactions) for the last 15 months. I just did my 2012 year end now 
and it correctly zero'd all the expense & income accounts by 
transferring the balance as at 31DEC2012 out of the accounts. It's been 
a long, long time since I did accountancy properly so I couldn't quite 
remember where I was supposed to transfer it to. I created an account 
called Equity:Year End Movement and when closing out the year the 
balances were transferred there.

Here's the problem - when I run a P&L for the year I get a whole lot of 
zeros back for each and every account. If I run the P&L up to 30DEC I 
get accurate figures representing the year, but as soon as I roll it on 
the extra day it includes the closing transaction.

For example - I have a balance of €345.67 in 
expenses:utilities:electricity on 30DEC. The year end transaction posted 
-€345.67 on 31DEC and the balance came down to NIL. This is fine in one 
way since it shows all my balances at zero on 01JAN (which I want), but 
not fine since it also shows them as zero on 31DEC - which I don't want 
and which isn't correct.

Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong here? Is the problem that I 
transferred the balances to an Equity account? Where should they 
transfer to?

Thanks,

David