[GNC] Handling of Equity and Retained Earnings

[Christopher Lam]

On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 at 15:39, Christian Lynbech <clynbech at gmail.com> wrote:

> It does seem as if the balance sheet contains all the information I need,
> however have I understood it correctly that one only specifies a single
> date (as opposed to an interval)? In other words, does the balance sheet
> always produce the accumulated result from the beginning of the book to the
> selected date? There is another report called Equity Statement that works
> on periods and while it has the end result, it lacks all of the individual
> account details that the balance sheet has.
>

Try the income statement (aka profit and loss) instead.

Or try the multicolumn balance-sheet (can display balances at several date)
or profit-and-loss instead in the experimental reports menu. Keep exploring
;)


> Somewhat related to this, I am also still struggling to figure out to
> handle the equity. On the Balance Sheet, I see the equity sum and the
> result, but the two are not combined. Are there any alternative to closing
> the book or do some manual transaction to get equity rebalanced?
>
> Let me try to provide an example.
>
> In year 1, I put 1000 into the company which is added to the equity
> sub-account “Founder Deposit”, the company buys a computer for 100 and does
> some work that pays 200. On the Balance Sheet for year 1, this is listed as
> equity of 1000 and result (income - expense) of 100. Lets say the company
> in year 2 also does work that pays 200, how do I handle that year 2 starts
> with equity of 1100, rather than equity of 1000 and a result of 100? I can
> move the result to equity by closing the book, but is there any report that
> takes this into account without actually doing the close?
>

Income statement from the beginning of year 2 to the end of year 2. Income
statements *don't* contain equity items (someone prove me wrong?).