Deleting old transactions and invoices

[Michael Hendry]

> On 5 Jan 2016, at 10:59, Axel Essbaum <axel at essbaum.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> (one more try ;-)
> 
> I am running GC 2.4.11 under OSX 10.8.  I have been using GC to track the transactions for my businesses since 2009.
> 
> How can I best remove all income and invoices from two clients for the past 6 years?
> 
> If I search my transaction descriptions for the clients I find a series of invoices and payments.  Can I simply delete all of these and then go adjust my Close Books transactions each year to correctly zero the corresponding income accounts?
> 
> Or does something happen under the covers with invoicing or books closing that will be screwed up if I do this?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> - Axel

I don’t use invoicing, so I’m not sure whether deleting an invoice and its corresponding payment is safe.

The Close Books transactions for each year end are not strictly necessary for Gnucash accounting, and can simply be deleted and re-created whenever you wish.

Suggestion:

1. Open your current Gnucash file, then "Save As…” experiment.gnucash or similar distinctive name.
2. Find and delete an invoice-payment pair - let’s say the first from 2009.
3. Delete the Close Books transactions, and recreate the one from the end of the 2009 year.
4. Check to see if the outcome is as expected.
5. If all well, run through the whole of 2009, checking periodically.
6. If all well, deal with the remainder.

Michael