Year end issues

[Jeff Abrahamson]

In France, even for small clubs like ours, we face a regulatory
requirement that the books be immutable after end of year.  This makes
sense in that if the tax authorities (even though we don't have to file
taxes) ask us a question and then find out that our books for some past
year have changed, they might reasonably be suspicious of our rigor and
tax-exempt-worthiness.

Is there a way in gnucash to make a set of transactions or a period of
time immutable?  For us, that's really the only reason we still have for
"closing books" -- avoiding this sort of mistake where something gets
accidentally entered or changed from a past year.

Jeff Abrahamson
+33 6 24 40 01 57
+44 7920 594 255

http://p27.eu/jeff/


On 15/01/18 22:23, Ronal B Morse wrote:
> This is what I do, but I'm only dealing with household and personal
> accounts and smallish investment portfolios. Because the statement
> closing dates for the investment and personal bank and credit accounts
> don't correspond exactly with the beginning date of the new book,
> there's always some monkey motion at the first of the year to "fix"
> opening balances or manually add transactions that were in float.
>
> Not much work, actually, and this keeps the year's data file (and
> backups) down to a reasonable size.  Access to past data is as easy as
> opening the appropriate file (one must remember to ensure you're
> working on the correct data at the start of the next session as the
> autobot opens the last data file you uses, not the newest by date).
>
> I understand that people using GnuCash for business purposes may be
> facing different issues and restrictions.
>
> RBM.
>
>
> On 01/15/2018 01:54 PM, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
>> 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 >>
>>
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-- 

Jeff Abrahamson
+33 6 24 40 01 57
+44 7920 594 255

http://p27.eu/jeff/