[GNC] Best way to track monthly balances of Expense-Income ?

[Adrien Monteleone]

Be aware that while the ‘Close Books’ procedure is available if you really want to use it, doing so is neither necessary or advised.

You will lose the ability to report across periods properly and you’ll lose the ability to run reports after a period is closed.

If you do not use the ‘Close Books’ procedure, you will retain full reporting ability for any desired time period, even a non-standard date range.

Some reports now include an ability to exclude closing entries, so you may have a workaround there, but it is not selected by default.

Additionally, the ‘Close Books’ procedure is not necessary to reset the Accounts tab ‘period’ columns. That will happen automatically based on the defined period in preferences as you have noted. I don’t ever close my books and this resets for me as it is supposed to.

Closing books was necessary in the days of pen and paper. Doing so was part of the process of generating paper reports. Early computer software carried this over out of a belief that it was good practice, but it is not strictly necessary unless the software requires it to produce proper reports. GnuCash does not, and can run a report for any set of transactions in any accounts for any custom or standard date range without any ‘closing’ entries or procedures.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Feb 27, 2020 w9d58, at 3:16 PM, Long <Phamhoanglongvn at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> I've found 2 options to keep tracking balances of your "expense - income"
> monthly. I write here because i think someone will need it and want to hear
> more idea from anyone have a good option than this or tell me the limit -
> cons of my options.
> 
> Example : 
> 01/2020 : i spent 100$ and earn 200$
> 02/2020 : i spent 100$ and earn 200$
> So, Your Tab Accounts will show you
> Assets   : 200$
> expense: 200$
> income : 400$
> It's maybe not good to keep tracking for personal. Because, their behavior
> are they want to know, what they "spent and earned" in this month in the TAB
> ACCOUNTS...
> 
> * 1 :  1.png <http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/file/t378901/1.png>  
> - on the TAB ACCOUNTS, upper right of header, Click the arrow, and it will
> show you many options, then choose "TOTAL (PERIOD)".
> - Edit GnuCash Preferences, Accounting Period Tab, set it start and end "of
> this month"
> => now, you will see the balances for each accounts like GnuCash does, But 1
> tab for Total of this Month, and the other is Total of ALL transactions of
> that Account.
> => Every Time you're using Report features. if you want "Yearly", you need
> to change the Period to Year.
> 
> * 2 : Use "Close Book" feature of GnuCash everytime you want.
> It will reset the balances of Expense-Income to zero, of course, your Total
> of "Assets" will not be affect (That mean it show you your assets Balances
> at that time).
> 
> Thank you for take your time to help me and other GnuCash's users to have
> the better way to practice with GnuCash.
> 
> Regards.