[GNC] Does anyone produce a "UK balance sheet" (FRS 102) ?

[Michael or Penny Novack]

Dr Kirby, I do not understand  what you are saying (about what gnucash 
does or not do) nor why you think the developers need to :do 
something"in order to produce a Balance Sheet  report.

I strongly suspect that that your "problem" has more to do with how you 
choose to set up your CoA (your accounts hierarchy)

On 12/10/2021 7:41 PM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:

> Whenever I pick up a book on accounting, it normally shows something like
> this.
>
> 1) Adds up all the fixed assets, and gives a total for fixed assets.
> 2) Adds up all the current assets, and gives a total for current assets
> 3) Adds the fixed and current assets to get a total of *all *assets
>
> That all seems very logical to me.
>
> *But a balance sheet submitted to Companies House does not show the total
> assets.

> Looking down the balance sheet for my company I see the following in order
>
> 1) Tangible Fixed Assets
> 2) Current Assets
> 3) Creditors amounts falling due within one year.
IF you want/are required to have these here (short term liabilities) and 
only long term liabilities under "liabilities" then make it so. You CAN 
have "contra accounts" when using gnucash. In other words, you can have 
an account with a name like "short term liabilities" under ASSETS. It 
would have a credit balance instead of the normal debit balance of an 
ordinary asset account.
> 4) Net current liabilities (that's equal to #2 - #3)

> 5) Total assets less current liabilities (that's #1 + #2 - #3)
> 6) Provision for liabilities  - I can't work out how that's calculated, but
> I see it is of uncertain timing and amounts. I guess I should ask my
> accountant how he came up with the figure. (*With the usual disclaimers,
> does anyone know whether that would be sensibly listed in GnuCash as a
> liability, despite its only an estimate?*)
    Not a gnucash matter. But yes, it is often necessary to place a 
"book value" on assets (or in this case a liability) for which the 
actual amount is not known.
> 7) Net assets (I can't work out how that's arrived at)
> 8) Shareholders - same as net assets.
    Where is the line item for long term liabilities? By #8 
"shareholders" I assume this is a corporation (with shares) and this is 
ofo course "equity" . I can see the possibility of "long term assets" 
(but not fixed assets). For example, THIS corporation might own a stake 
in another. It is of course possible that the "balance sheet" you are 
showing us is just having lines as applicable to your specific case and 
not what other corporations reporting in your jurisdiction would have. 
In other words, you are showing us arbitrary line numbers and NOT "line 
items" of the report to the government. In other words, maybe what you 
are showing us is missing both "long term assets" and "long term 
liabilities" simply because your corporation doesn't have either of those.
>
> I think I will write myself a computer program, that tries every
> combination of figures to arrive at others. I think if I add every
> combination, I will get there eventually. I have a computer with two
> 26-core CPUs and 384 GB RAM, so I should just about have enough computer
> power. 😂
>
Any computer has enough "power" if you give it enough time and storage 
(Turing published his proof in the late 30's)

But I want to point something out. You want to have your CoA structured 
so that the DATA you will need to fill in the required reports is 
available. Not necessarily the report in finished form. That could be a 
waste of time. Mind, I am going by the reports I have to submit.  I face 
the additional problem that some of these MUST be filed "whole dollar" 
and MUST agree with the previous year's filing. The issue there, of 
course, is that (rounded A + rounder B) does not necessarily equal 
rounded (A + B) so a certain amount of "fudging" might have to be 
applied to make everything work out. And choosing how and where to fudge 
so as to minimize the overall distortion is not a task I'd care to try 
to program << and this WAS how I used to make my living >>

Michael D Novack