[GNC] retained earnings in balance sheet: where does it come from?

[Adrien Monteleone]

Yes, sorry. I misunderstood your post.

The Balance Sheet Report does show a Retained Earnings line if you do not close books that is calculated as if you had. (which is why you don’t need to use that procedure, GnuCash doesn’t require you to close books as that is a procedure mostly dictated by physical paper constraints)

I thought you meant an actual account with that name, hence my previous post.

So the Balance Sheet is telling you the result of Income-Expenses for 2016 is 54.10.

The fact that this is also the same amount as this particular transaction you entered for 13/01/17 is purely coincidental. (and should be, since it is entered in 2017 and you are running a balance sheet as of 31/12/16, unless you *aren’t* setting that report date properly) Transactions after 31/12/16 (or whatever date you run your balance sheet for) are not part of the report calculation, so they can’t affect it.

2015 might not show that line, but that would mean your expenses match your income exactly for that year, an unlikely but not impossible scenario.

First, be certain of your report dates in the General Tab.

The ‘Retained Earnings/Loss’ line in the Balance Sheet should be equal to the ’Net Income/Loss’ for the same period on the Income Statement/P&L.

(that is what you would zero out to an actual ‘retained earnings’ account which is a child of Equity)

Your Net for 2016 should be 54.10.

Your Net for 2015 should be zero.

(assuming your Balance Sheet Report dates are 31/12/16 and 31/12/15 respectively)

> On Mar 10, 2019, at 3:58 AM, Andrea Borgia <andrea at borgia.bo.it> wrote:
> 
> Il 10/03/19 01:19, Adrien Monteleone ha scritto:
> 
>> Retained Earnings is posted when you perform a close book operation.
>> (or manually zero your income/expense accounts to Equity)
>> If you didn’t do this for 2015, there would be no entry.
>> If you performed the 2016 close book operation in Jan 2017, you’ll
>> have a retained earnings entry in that month for the net
>> income-expenses for 2016. If you were a non-individual entity, that
>> amount would be the entity’s taxable income for the year, hence the
>> tax flag. You probably want to fix that date to 12/31/16.
> 
> Hi, Adrien.
> 
> Thanks for the answer, however I think you got it backwards because I didn't explain it properly: what I find interesting is that the report shows a retained earnings value in the first place, whereas the entry itself was made by me and it's a tax(*) recorded on the same day as the bank statement (hence, correctly, in 2017).
> 
> So, I have the following entries:
> 14/01/2015: 53.80
> 20/01/2016: 53.80
> 13/01/2017: 54.10
> 18/01/2018: 54.00
> 
> 54.10 showed up in the balance sheet for 2016, 53.80 did not show up for 2015.
> 
> Does this additional information still fit your explanation?
> 
> 
> Thanks again,
> Andrea.
> 
> (*) yeah, in Italy you pay a small percentage of your bank account
> balance for the privilege of having a bank account. Funny place, I know.
> 
>