Cash Flow Report

[Mike or Penny Novack]

> and when I use the P&L report for a prior year
>I have to date it from 1/1/?? to 12/30/?? because of the way GnuCash closes
>out Income & Expense categories.  If I date it all the way to 12/31/?? I
>get nothing but zeros. 
>
OK, I can help you with this one. You are using "close the books" and 
having a problem with the fact that there is no "date that is not a 
date" between the years on which to do the close operation. Here is what 
to do <<year end processing >>

1) When you have all transactions for the current year entered but 
BEFORE you do the "close the books" copy the file giving it a name like 
"precloseYYYY" and also copy that to backup.
2) Now run "close the books" and make a backup copy "postcloseYYYY"

Whenever you wan to (re)run the P&L ("Income Statement" for YYYY) 
specify that you want gnucash to open "precloseYYYY". However if you 
have once run it (say before having closed the books) and exported it 
and saved a copy to backup you shouldn't have to rerun it.

Understand? Your apparent problem is just not having a reasonable backup 
procedure in place. Backups are necessary. It isn't a matter of if your 
machine will die but when.

Michael