[GNC] Why I create a new datafile each year for GnuCash

[D]

On October 21, 2019, at 10:40 PM, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:

>Certainly, to each their own. I enjoy reading of other’s process and workflows and why they make certain decisions. Thanks for offering yours.
>My own experiences are in-line:
>> On Oct 21, 2019 w43d294, at 2:15 AM, James Thorpe <James at fusionsystems.co.za> wrote:
>> 

>> c) Complexities with reports that don't look at date ranges (eg. Trial Balance)
>> 
>> Certain reports just look at the final balance in the account - eg. the Trial Balance report. This means that if I draw a TB the expenses, income etc will report the total for the entire period for which I've been using GnuCash. What my accountant wants in my Trail Balance report is my total expenses for the year, not forever. I gather that the "Close books" function may be able to resolve these issues but have not looked into this further.
>I don’t close books, but I also don’t use that report. So I can’t speak from experience, but even with closing the books, I think the report will still look at all transactions. The Close Books procedure simply makes two multi-split transactions, which zero all expenses and income accounts to Equity:Retained Earnings. Your assets (including AR), liabilities (including AP), and other Equity accounts are unaffected.
>The historical transactions are still there with amounts. The report will just get to the closing transactions and subtract them all out again.
>Perhaps this would be a good RFE for that report to allow specifying a date range.

Um, the dictionary definition of a "trial balance" is "a statement of all debits and credits in a double-entry account book, with any disagreement indicating an error." It is, by definition, a report "as of" a given time that includes all transactions up to that date.

For the OP, I'll note that you aren't achieving any different results by starting a new file; you're just converting all your earlier transactions into a single "Opening balance" entry.

I am pretty sure that you would in fact be looking for the "Income Statement," which allows the user to define a set time period. This is also known as a "Profit and Loss" report.

David