Balance Sheet - Retained earnings?

[John Ralls]

> On Feb 5, 2017, at 8:47 AM, John Whitmore <arigead at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm using GnuCash to produce a balance sheet report and in the output of the
> report I've got:
> 
> Equity
> Retained Earnings         457.04
> Total Equity              457.04
> 
> My probelm is that there are no transactions in the Retained Earnings
> account. It's only there because it would have been created when I first
> created my initial business accounts. So there's zero transactions, so zero
> balance but the balance sheet is coming up with a number for it.
> 
> I'm a bit confused, as that number ain't showing up anywhere either. Actually
> I'm totally confused by it.

The balance sheet report creates a virtual Retains Earnings account and populates it with the net of the income and expense accounts.

Regards,
John Ralls