[GNC] (GNU) How to Transition to a New Year

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 1/9/2020 8:09 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
> Do you *need* to start a new file each year?
>
> While GnuCash has a ‘close the books’ procedure, it is not necessary to use it as that is a holdover from the days of pen and paper where physical limitations of bound volumes required doing so for organization purposes. (maybe some minor security purposes as well) Computers can keep everything in one file and you simply run reports for the time periods you need.
>
> If you want to proceed anyway, there are various methods and workflows, but that really depends on your reason for doing so in order to determine which will be most useful to you.
>
> Yes, you can simply ’save as’ a new file and the old one will not contain newer entries. This is the easiest and simplest way to retain your account tree and current balance info across all of your accounts and any book-specific preferences.
>
> Some people burn the old file onto a read-only disc for archival purposes along with PDF copies of year-end reports, though they can be regenerated by opening the file.

I rather suspect that THIS is what the question is about. Even if you 
make regular backups, useful to know WHAT the data status of a backup 
is* << as of what time >>. So yes, after completion of books for  a 
year, no more entries going to be made for that year or reports run for 
that year, I normally do a "save as" to a name indicating the new year. 
I say using a name, since I would have THAT as part of the file name. 
This on the YE backup I would see perhaps MATACFbooks2019, 
MATACFbooks2020, etc. And yes, I would usually "burn" copies of the 
books for an organization to be given into the control of another 
officer -- but that would be done MUCH later in the new year when the 
various filings could be included on the medium being turned over.

Michael D Novack


* The biggest "success" of my working days was to design/implement a 
"system" (automated) to use unique dataset/file names to prevent a wrong 
backup from being mistakenly restored or wrong file used for a run << 
there had been  a major disaster (wrong backup used to restore) with one 
of the world's large "financials" taking a week to recover and get back 
to running current daily production.