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

[Richard Claeys]

Thank you, Adrien, for the prompt and reassuring reply.

Based on your guidance, we'll just stay the course and keep adding to the current file.  We're retired and use GnuCash in place of Quicken to track household spending and organize our taxes.  Now retired, we have simplified our investment portfolio and don't need all the various accounts we managed in the past.

Glad to learn we can keep going with the same file and format.  GnuCash is working well for us and will continue as our money management application.

More thanks and Happy New Year,

Richard Claeys

-----Original Message-----
From: gnucash-user <gnucash-user-bounces+rclaeys=accesscom.com at gnucash.org> On Behalf Of Adrien Monteleone
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2020 5:09 PM
To: Gnucash Users <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] (GNU) How to Transition to a New Year

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.

You can also just keep the file going and run the  close books  procedure. This will close out your income and expense categories to Equity:Retained Earnings. Again, this is not necessary, but some people who ve been doing accounting for decades are more comfortable maintaining the habit. There is no real benefit, and you will lose the ability to run reports across period boundaries or even for prior periods depending on the date of your closing entries. (yearly for most people)

You can do either of the above, and start with a fresh file every year, recreating your chart of accounts, adding in opening balances from last period s ending balances, etc. Note, if you use the Business Features, you ll need to export-import all of your customers, vendors and employees, and you ll have to figure out a way to handle carryover AP/AR as there is no built-in mechanism for doing so. You d lose all invoice/bill aging data.

If you are tracking investments, especially if you have many of them, I d highly recommend to just stick with the current file. Other s may report decent mileage, but I d think trying to move ending balances over to a new file and then losing historical price information for still-held securities would be a nightmare.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Jan 9, 2020 w2d9, at 6:47 PM, Richard Claeys <rclaeys at accesscom.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to start a new file for the new year and don't see a simple 
> way to make the change either in the user's manual or the FAQs.  Do I 
> have to create a new file or can I simply save entries after 1/1/2020 
> to a new destination and rename it?  If the answer is in the manual, 
> just point me to the correct chapter; if not, let me know the simplest 
> way to carry over my current list of accounts and start a new and 
> separate file or folder.  I'm sure I'm missing something and could sure use your help.
> 
> 
> 
> Thank you in advance,
> 
> 
> 
> Richard Claeys

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