Year end issues

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Let's discuss this (and possible options)

First, you need to understand what "close the books" does do and what is 
does not do. It creates a transaction (or transactions) to zero out 
income and expense accounts to equity. It does NOT remove transactions 
and so will not make your file smaller.

It sounds like what you want is something more like to was in the old 
days of books kept in BOOKS, pen and ink on paper.  What was common at 
the end of each accounting period was to close the old books and open 
new ones. The old volumes were put safely by in case they needed to be 
referenced later.

One of the advantages of software like gnucash is that it can create the 
usual reports without actually closing the books. Easy to reference old 
transactions (previous accounting periods) without having to "bring them 
back" as they would have done in the old days when physical books. But 
suppose you don't want this, you don't want to be seeing all those 
accounts that have become obsolete cluttering up your view, etc. Or are 
worried about the sheer size of the file, etc.

You CAN simulate what was done in the old days when they opened new 
books each period. This is just like when you created your gnucash books 
in the first place. You run a final Balance Sheet report which gives you 
the balances of all of the standing accounts (asset, liability, and 
equity). You create a new set of books, say by exporting the CoA and 
importing that to a new set of books (all accounts zero) and can delete 
any accounts that are obsolete. You then enter the initial values from 
the Balance Sheet << note: I never use the facility to create accounts 
with an initial value but instead with an opening transaction, or rather 
two so each is split on only one side >>

You of course SAVE the old file. If you at some future time want to look 
at old (prior period) transactions you simply ask gnucash to open THAT 
(saved) file instead of the one you are currently using.

Michael D Novack

PS: All of my books are small enough that I have never been tempted to 
do this. The obsolete accounts do not appear in the reports as furnished 
to the boards of the organizations because EDITED first << in other 
words, I do not expect gnucash to produce the final pretty version of 
reports. I have to edit them anyway to add annotations explaining and 
unusual entries so all the editing for "pretty print" etc. can be done 
at that time >>