new year

[Wm...]

Mon, 9 Nov 2015 09:46:59 <56406B93.5030808 at yahoo.co.uk>
Katie Eldridge <eldridgetideswell-katie at yahoo.co.uk> wrote...

>Gary,
>Michael referred to Gnucash having a method to do this, but didn't 
>explain how...
>If you go to 'tools' -> 'close book', this will move the 'retained 
>earnings' balance to the equity account you specify and zero out all 
>the income and expense accounts, so whilst you will still have the same 
>file (and therefore keep all your client and vendor details etc), all 
>the totals on your accounts page will be for the current year.
>Whilst I can follow the logic for not doing this, I also couldn't see 
>how I could easily keep track of our taxed profits (ie the amount which 
>we'd paid corporation tax on already) without moving the year's profits 
>to an account from which I could then take the tax...
>hope that helps,
>Katie

Are you closing the books because you can't get the numbers you need 
otherwise?

I did a spreadsheet about this for a Charity recently because the 
Trustees wanted to know what the Balance Sheet numbers other than 
Assets, Liabilities and Equity meant to them (answer "not a lot").

If I'm on the right track maybe I should do a quick write up on the 
relationships between the numbers on the

Equity Statement
P&L / Income Statement
Balance Sheets (both flavours)

The thing most people seemed to get stuck with is that if the books 
aren't closed the Retained Earnings on the Balance Sheets goes up and 
down in mysterious ways. Once joined up to the other main docs all 
became clear.

Also there is nothing stopping someone from closing the books for 
*reporting* purposes (mainly to produce familiar looking Balance Sheets) 
and then deleting the closing transactions and getting on with business.

-- 
Wm...