Cash Book

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Chris Bester wrote:

>Hi Michael
>
>I am retired and have not touched any accounting programme for a long time.
>As from January 2013 I have been called in to help out at a Non-Profit
>Organisation.   I had obtained a new computer in the meantime with Windows
>7.  My previous accounting programs could not run on Windows 7. And to
>upgrade would have cost a lot of money, hence, I stumbled on gnucash.  The
>dominant accounting program in my country is Pastel.  I have also, over time
>used Quick  Books and Brilliant etc.  All these programs automatically end
>off books at the end of the prescribed financial year and start the new year
>with new balances which are the ending balances of the previous year.  I
>presume this is what David C is referring to.  No miraculous software as you
>mentioned just getting yourself updated on other programs. 
>
That was a completely different question (or so I interpreted it). A 
question about passwords, locks, checksums, etc.

With reference to what appears to be your question(s)

a) Gnucash can produce the standard required reports even without 
"closing the books" (Balance sheets for beginning and end of period and 
Income Statement for the interval) The Balance Sheet of the end of the 
period has to be the Balance Sheet of the start of the next. Most people 
using gnucash don't bother to "close the books" but you can. Even if 
they do, the usually prefer NOT having to open a different file to see 
transactions in the standing accounts of some previous period but you 
CAN do this if that is what you want (have a file for each year).

b) Gnucash does not offer an AUTOMATED way to recreate the chart of 
accounts populated with the balances. But it does allow you to 
export/import the chart of accounts (all zero amounts). So if you want 
(or your auditors insist on) your keeping records that way, simply 
create the file for the books for the next period and populate the 
balances using the data from the Balance Sheet report. This is exactly 
as if you were entering the data for the standing accounts as new user 
of gnucash. In other words, if you were able to do this for year zero 
(the initial amounts coming from your previous software) you should be 
able to do that with the data coming from the previous year under 
gnucash. You prove that you have entered the same amounts by producing a 
"Balance Sheet" as soon as you have entered this one (gigantic) split 
transaction -- Balance Sheet at end of previous year identical to 
Balance Sheet at start of new year.

c) I would check with your auditors to see what they are really 
requiring as you might be misinterpreting them. For example, it is 
possible that all they require (to show previous data not altered) is 
copies made/burned and sent out of your control. This IS a method of 
proving "data not altered" that can not be gotten around, no matter how 
skilled the hacker. It is, by the way, what I do. I don't "close the 
close the books" nor do I restart the standing accounts. But I do "burn" 
a copies of the file (the books), the Income Statement (relabeled 
"Statement of Revenues" as non-profits) and Balance Sheets. One copy 
kept for back-up and one copy sent out of my control. Any question of 
later alteration of data could be settled with a byte by byte compare of 
those CDs.

Michael