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

Andrea Borgia andrea at borgia.bo.it
Wed Mar 13 16:33:28 EDT 2019


Il 10/03/19 10:16, Adrien Monteleone ha scritto:


> 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.

I'm not a big fan of coincidences where lots of transactions are
involved and the difference matches just one of them.

I had made an error in the P&L calculation for 2016, meaning I had
included that amount as a loss instead of leaving it out. Now that am 
splitting the file, I have fixed the mistake for 2016 already and 2017 
is next in line.


> 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.

No, no, it's downright impossible: I am saving quite a bit each year but
I was closing the books (even before splitting) at the end of the year
so the balance sheet on dec.31st would show all zeroes... unless someone
with fat fingers had made an error and included an entry from the
following year :P

With one file per year, I saw that closing the books on jan.1st of the 
following year would enable me to have a meaningful balance sheet and 
that's what I'll be doing. That has the added bonus of being much easier 
to carry over to the next year.


Last but not least, sorry if I mix up some terms: I am not an accountant 
so, each time I want to ask a question, I have to re-run gnucash in 
English to check whether the report I used in Italian is what I expect 
it to be with an English label.


Regards,
Andrea.


More information about the gnucash-user mailing list