[GNC] Gnucash-created "closing" entries

[David Carlson]

Stan,

You could try using the Close Books function  to create model transactions
then duplicate them to get copies that likely do not contain the odd dates.

David C

On Fri, Dec 28, 2018, 1:37 PM Stan Brown <the_stan_brown at fastmail.fm wrote:

> > From: David Cousens <davidcousens at bigpond.com>
> > Subject: Re: [GNC] Basic Question (I hope) - End of Year Procedure
> >
> > The easiest way to achieve that would be to manually perform the closing
> > transactions rather than use the inbuilt procedure, then they are just
> > ordinary transactionsand won't have the KVP pair in them.
> >
> > For closing transactions, they should always appear after any other
> > transaction for the period being closed so that the transferred balances
> > represent the true state of the accounts at the end of the period. This
> was
> > why accountants introduced an artificial 13th month into the financial
> year
> > so that all closing transactions were forced to occur fater any other
> > transaction that occurred within the year. Any required adjustments to
> the
> > accounts  are also usually carried out before the closing transactions
> for
> > the same reason.
> >
> > A list of key value pairs is a data structure that is part of each
> > transaction record. It allows arbitrary data to be added to the main data
> > structure (the transaction) without requiring that structure to be
> redefined
> > throughout the code. Only the code for processing the data in the KVP
> needs
> > to be added to the code base to add features requiring new data not
> > previously stored. The facilities for extracting it and adding it are a
> part
> > of the original transaction data structure. The KVP is also used in other
> > data structures within GnuCash for the same purpose.
>
>
> Thanks for your reply. I understand why you would say that the closing
> entries should be the last transactions, but let me explain why that
> doesn't work for me. The Gnucash closing entries are only two of about half
> a dozen closing entries that I have.
>
> I make a distinction between (a) ordinary income and expenses, and (b)
> several non-routine types of income or expense that I can't plan for. (a)
> are Income and Expense type accounts, and GC closes them into an Equity
> account called Ordinary Income Summary. (b) are things like Gain or Loss on
> Investments, or Legacies, which would dwarf ordinary income and expenses,
> and they are Equity accounts, not Income or Expenses.
>
> When I "close the books", GC generates two transactions, one summarizing
> income and one summarizing expenses. Then to have a transaction showing net
> income, I have to create it manually:
>
> Debit:  Ordinary Income Summary   $500.00
> Credit: Ordinary Income Summary   $425.00
> Credit: Net Worth                 $ 75.00
>
> Naturally, that transaction must follow the "close the books"
> transactions, since I don't know gross income and total expenses until
> after that transaction is created. And then my others:
>
> Debit:  Gain or Loss on Investments: $ XXXX.XX
> Credit: Net Worth                    $ XXXX.XX
>
> And so forth, for the other non-ordinary accounts.
>
> I know you suggested that I should create the closing transactions for
> income and expenses myself, but there are probably 50 accounts, so that
> seems like a lot of work.
>
> Surely there's a way within the GUI to make the special "closing"
> transactions into just regular transactions, so that I can enter the
> half-dozen final closing transactions and have them in the right order.
>
> --
> Stan Brown
> the_stan_brown at fastmail.fm
> https://BrownMath.com
> http://OakRoadSystems.com/
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