[GNC] Basic Question (I hope) - End of Year Procedure

[Stephen M. Butler]

On 12/24/18 7:13 AM, Michael or Penny Novack wrote:
> On 12/24/2018 4:22 AM, David Cousens wrote:
>> Jenny
>> As well as the wiki that David T mentioned the help manual also has a
>> section on closing the books:
>>
> I will add something to this because of your "no magic undo button"
>
> There sort of is. You can always make a copy of a file before you do 
> some irrevocable change (this of course doesn't apply just to gnucash 
> files)
>
> Even if you do not ordinarily make backup copies of your books, 
> especially if you are going to do a "close the books" operation, I 
> suggest a backup copy before this operation and after (represents the 
> state of the file at the start of the next year)
>
> Michael D Novack
>
There is another option if you are using the GnC method that simply 
writes a set of transactions that zero out the Income and Expense items 
and places the opposing entry in the appropriate location chosen by the 
user.  You can simply delete those two transactions and the books are 
magically no longer closed.

I found that out when I used that option to close a series of years one 
after the other only to discover I'd messed up on an entry on year 1.  I 
simply removed the closing transactions for that year, made the 
appropriate changes, and redid the close for that year.


Note:  You don't really have to close the books for each year and GnC 
will keep track of things for you.  But, I wanted to have a set of 
Equity accounts showing the retained earnings for each year.  After all 
that hard work, my wife indicated it wasn't really necessary.  <<sigh>>


-- 
Stephen M Butler, PMP, PSM
Stephen.M.Butler51 at gmail.com
kg7je at arrl.net
253-350-0166
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