[GNC] Recording dividend payoffs

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 4/24/2019 2:15 AM, Justin Mathew via gnucash-user wrote:
>> I certainly prefer the approach of declaring dividends as a contra acunt to
>> Retained Earnings and/or debiting it directly to Retained Earnings but it
>> will require closure of the books to provide retained earnings to handle it
>> properly.
> And hence my suggestion to make GnuCash handle such alternate ways too.

I think there is some important confusion about "retained earnings" (or 
losses) as appearing on the Balance Sheet report. This is a VIRTUAL 
account provided because gnucash is not requiring closing the books.

I agree with the concept that if the entity is a corporation, dividends 
be paid out of retained earnings (regular dividends at least) and I 
learned in the old days where this was required for corporations. But if 
you want to do that you should have a REAL (as opposed to virtual) 
account for "retained earnings".

Again, having learned bookkeeping in the old days, I see nothing about 
gnucash that would prevent me from doing a manual close the books to a 
real "retained earnings" account under equity. This isn't about what you 
can or cannot do in gnucash but a matter of knowing how to use gnucash 
to do what you want to do.

Michael D Novack