2018?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/30/2017 3:54 PM, Kelly Sandwell wrote:
> What do I need to do to use your gnucash in 2018?  I have used it this year
> (2017) and I am very impressed.  I don't know much about accounting but my
> tax preparer was very happy with the reports I showed him a month ago.
>
>   Thanks,
>
> Kelly Sandwell
You don't HAVE to do anything. Gnucash can continue to produce reports 
for the "current year" as long as you correctly specify the date or date 
range for the report. You don't HAVE to do a "close the books" (whether 
you would want to depends among other things how you look at your data**).

That said I suggest:
a) Even if you don't do this regularly, make a back up copy of the file, 
ideally onto removable medium so could go somewhere safe.
b) I would also make a copy of the file incorporating the new year in 
its name, and from now on use that new file. That will make a whole lot 
of things easier (like SAFELY getting rid of old of all log files etc. 
since the NAMES of these will be different). Also your old file is a 
backup (of state at year end) handy on your machine (as opposed to the 
one you sent for safekeeping off site*)

Michael D Novack

* If I seem to be overly worried about this, we had a house fire in 
2006, where just one room burned but backups were not far enough away to 
escape heat/smoke damage.

** IF you want the balances of the temporary accounts (income and 
expense) to reflect the current year as opposed to just using reports is 
one of those factors that might decide you on doing a "close the books". 
If you do do "close the books" either using the facility or manually I 
suggest you make backups before and after, named according << like 
"beforeclose2017" and "afterclose2017" because you can't rerun an 
"Income Statement" report after.