Closing books

[Derek Atkins]

Arne Hanssen <lists at tuxic.net> writes:

> Den 05. jan. 2013 22:22, skrev Yawar Amin:
>> This has been discussed quite a few times before. In GnuCash, it's _completely unnecessary_ to close books. GnuCash's reports handle multiple periods smoothly without you needing to needing to mark period transitions in any way.
>>
>
> Is that a fact?  I have never tested that as I always have closed

Yes, it is a fact.  I've never closed my books.

> books. From a bookkeeping point of view (sorry for my bad english),
> closing books should be the (only) correct procedure as this transfers
> all income and costs to an equity account and zeroes all income and
> cost account balances, ready for a new year (or whatever period).
>
> As far as I can see (and remember right now), the loss og gain for a
> given period is reported as not posted and equity balance is not
> updated until i close books.  But if you mean that closing books is
> unnecessary when using GC for simple usage where formal correctness is
> not an issue, you may be right, or I am missing something?

The Balance Sheet and P&L (Income Statement) reports will give you those
values just fine.

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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