[GNC] Gnucash Close Books option

[Peter S. Shenkin]

Hi,

I'm using Gnucash 4.3 on MacOS. This version has a "Close Books" option.

I do understand that using this option, Income and Expenses can be made to
transfer to an equity subaccount (like Equity:Starting balance).

I also understand that there are alternatives to using this option, but in
this query I am just trying to find out in more detail what Close Books
does.

What I don't understand (based on this writeup
<https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Closing_Books>) is exactly how it works.

   - Following closing the books on year X, will the Dec 31, year X
   balances still reflect the year-X income and expenses, or will they have
   been zeroed at that point?
   - If so, it would be difficult to go back and correct something that was
      done mistakenly during year X, would it not?
   - Does the new Equity result appear on Jan 1, year X+1?
      - If the two results appear on different days, it would appear that
      Gnucash can't do this by means of a transaction, because a
transaction (as
      I understand it) takes place at a single moment in time.
      - I have heard that to get around this, some accounting software
      creates a fictional date (like Dec 32 or Jan 0) on which it performs the
      transferring transactions, so that Dec 31, year X reflects the closing
      balances for the year and Jan 1 is initialized with the new
balances. But I
      think there would have been mention of this if that is the way
Gnucash does
      it.

Thank you,
-P.