Recording dividends paid out

[John Ralls]

> On Feb 23, 2015, at 4:48 AM, Ron Stone <ronstone at ncf.ca> wrote:
> 
> Thanks John and Alice,
> 
> This proved remarkably easy to do, once I knew which buttons to push, and as a bonus, closing the books demystified some accounting concepts and terminology.
> 
> I noticed that the online help states that book closing is really unnecessary in GnuCash, and can confuse some reports. If I chose not to, I would have no pool of retained earnings against which to record dividends. In such a case, is there an alternative approach to drawing on equity to pay them out?

You could just have Equity:Dividends, which would carry a negative balance. The balance sheet report calculates retained earnings directly from the Income and Expense accounts, so you would use that to see what the pool is.

Regards,
John Ralls