Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

Stan Brown the_stan_brown at fastmail.fm
Thu Feb 22 14:11:21 EST 2018


New user here. I understand double-entry accounting pretty well, but I'm
struggling to adapt that knowledge to GnuCash's take on double-entry
accounting.

Why do we specify an accounting period?  How is it used in GnuCash?

I assumed it was related to closing the books, but section 8.9 in the
help manual says we shouldn't close the books because GnuCash doesn't
understand that the closing entries it generates are special, so it will
think income and expenses in the period are all zero.

(I'm accustomed to close the books monthly, with monthly income
statement and end-of-month balance sheet -- that's when I would
reconcile everything, though I understand GnuCash reconciliation is
driven in  a different way. I also want to get an annual income
statement. I understand that if I don't close the books monthly I can
still get an income state monthly by specifying dates. But in that case,
why would I close the books at the end of the year? or ever? Or is there
some benefit in GnuCash to closing the books that I'm missing?)

-- 
Regards,
Stan Brown
Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com
http://OakRoadSystems.com



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