[GNC] GNC Equity and Retained Earnings not tracking together?

[Brian]

I'm wondering if GNUCash is actually calculating RETAINED EARNINGS
properly.  Because after issuing a distribution to shareholder the
Retaining Earning calculation increased by Net Income but did not
decrease by Asset:Cash which was debited and credited to
Equity:Shareholder Distribution.

I have never run a "close" on the books. This is on GNUCash 3.8.
Equity has four accounts: Shareholder Distributions, Shareholder
Contributions. Capital Stock, and AAA-( Opening balance to GNUCash from
previous Quckbooks). This is for a small s-corp business and has
standard Asset, Liability, Income and Expense accounts.

I understand that the Equity:Shareholder Distribution appears on the
Balance Sheet as a negative number.  But what I'm confused about is
that Retained Earnings line only increases, by the yearly Net
Income, and didn't decrease by the Shareholder Distribution at the end
of the year. While Total Equity did decrease to the correct number. I
did look at a Balance Sheet report dated 3/1/2020, since Shareholder
distribution was made 12/30/2019. I would expect that when Assets
decrease due to equity being removed (i.e. Shareholder Distribution)
that the Retained Earnings should also decrease.  

Is my understanding of retained earnings wrong? Did I do something wrong
only entering the one transaction above? Or, why is retained earnings
on the Balance Sheet not decreasing while equity is properly decreasing 
following the Assets-Liability=Equity=(income-expense) formula?  Is
there a corporation setup or alternate report for properly showing
retained earnings at a point in time?

Thanks for the advice.