[GNC] 4.9 account set up of going business

[John Ralls]

> On Dec 29, 2021, at 4:08 PM, Rogier F. van Vlissingen <vliscony at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I had previously moved to GnuCash3.8 starting 1/1/2020, unfortunately,
> there appears to be some sort of corruption in my file.
> 
> I am now doing it over in 4.9.
> 
> However, I am having a problem with the Opening Balances for 2020, as I
> seem to be unable to set up an opening balance for retained earnings.
> 
> The numbers check out, but everything goes in Opening balances, which is
> therefore too high by the amount of the retained earnings.
> 
> You can't even do a transfer.
> 
> 
> What is to be done?

A business book wouldn't normally have an opening balances account. OTOH money is fungible and it doesn't really make sense to divide every asset's start-of-year balance between liabilities, paid-in capital, and retained earnings, so it's in my mind quite defensible to use Opening Balances to accumulate everything. Liabilities are handled by creating normal opening balance entries. The New File Hierarchy Assistant doesn't let you make opening balance entries in Equity accounts, but you can add transactions to RE and whatever you're calling paid-in capital to zero out Opening Balances when you've finished with the assistant.

Regards,
John Ralls