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

Christopher Lam christopher.lck at gmail.com
Sun Mar 24 23:00:55 EDT 2019


In the balance sheet, retained earnings refer to total income minus
expenses on the report date.

On Thu., 14 Mar. 2019, 04:35 Andrea Borgia, <andrea at borgia.bo.it> wrote:

> 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.
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>


More information about the gnucash-user mailing list