[GNC] 4.9 account set up of going business

John Ralls jralls at ceridwen.us
Thu Dec 30 16:07:05 EST 2021 

Maybe what you're missing is that Opening Balances accounts are created as placeholders by the Hierarchy Assistant. Before you can create the balancing transaction you must select the account on the Accounts page, click the Edit button in the toolbar, clear the Placeholder checkbox, and click OK.

Once you've created the necessary transactions you should re-set Opening Balances to a placeholder.

Regards,
John Ralls


> On Dec 30, 2021, at 12:52 PM, Rogier F. van Vlissingen <vliscony at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It happens to be a loss.
> 
> I seem to be missing something. For all the other accounts, I simply post
> to the account with the balancing transaction going to Opening Balances.
> But because of what I described, I get Opening Balances $x and Retained
> Earnings $0. Nothing I can think of gets the money from Opening Balances
> into Retained Earnings.
> 
> Or is it that when I set it up, I have to do some split transactions to
> make sure the appropriate amount ends up in Retained Earnings and the
> remainder is Retained Earnings?
> 
> Not sure how, but I could give that a try, I will just have to set that up
> all over again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 3:33 PM <davidcousens49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Rogier
>> 
>> What is the form of the transaction being used to record the opening
>> balance of the Retained Earnings account. Assuming your business has been
>> profitable and it is not a loss, then the transaction to record its opening
>> balances it  should be something like
>>                                                            Dr
>> Cr
>> Equity:Opening Balances           xxx
>> Equity: Retained Earnings                             xxx
>> 
>> This should reduce the balance of the Retained earnings account while
>> keeping the overall Equity account balance constant.
>> 
>> David Cousens
>> 
>> On Thu, 2021-12-30 at 15:18 -0500, Rogier F. van Vlissingen wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks, I do not get it. I can set up all the opening balances, except one
>> retained earnings. To me retained earnings on 1/1/2020 is the accumulated
>> position from prior years, I do not see how I can finagle that via what sub
>> accounts. Evidently, when I set up the opening transaction, which is fairly
>> simple, the retained earnings is left at zero, because I cannot access it,
>> and so that difference pops up as part of the opening balance accumulator
>> account, which is therefore too high by the exact amount of the retained
>> earnings.
>> 
>> Am I missing something?
>> 
>> On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 2:52 PM <davidcousens49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Rogier
>> 
>> 
>> When you transfer account to a new set of books, you would record the
>> opening
>> balances of the Asset and Liability accounts  against the Opening balances
>> entries in Equity.
>> 
>> Asset entries will be a debit to the asset account and a credit to the
>> opening
>> balances account and Liabilities a credit to the liability account and
>> debit to
>> the opening balances account in Equity.
>> 
>> With this all you previous equity balances have been transferred to the
>> Opening
>> Balances account and the books are balanced. The  Opening Account Balance
>> should
>> equal the total Equity balance in your previous set of books.
>> 
>> If you wish to restore the Equity sub-account balances (assuming the
>> accounts
>> have a credit balance in your previous books), you would need to credit the
>> aappropriate Equity sub-account in your new book  for the amount of its
>> balance
>> in the previous set of books and debit the Opening Balances account for
>> the same
>> amount.  This will keep the books balanced.
>> 
>> If you restore all the previous books equity sub-account balances, then if
>> your
>> previous set of books was balanced, the Opening Balances account should
>> end up
>> with a 0 balance.
>> 
>> As John pointed out, the initial account setup daemon only allows you to
>> set the
>> opening balances for asset and liability accounts. To restore the Equity
>> balances you would need to enter the transactions manually from the Opening
>> Balances register after creating the equity subaccounts initially with zero
>> balances.
>> 
>> David Cousens
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, 2021-12-30 at 06:33 -0500, Rogier F. van Vlissingen wrote:
>>> Yeah, thanks. I am on mint, and it has version 3.8. I was able to do
>>> something like that in version 3.8. However, I had some problems with it,
>>> and moved to 4.9 now because of some other problems, but now I can't do
>>> this, and that sort of kills the fun.
>>> 
>>> Let's see if someone comes up with a better suggestion... hope springs
>>> eternal... and if not, I am moving to another platform.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 12:34 AM William Prescott <will at theprescotts.com
>>> 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Please disregard.
>>>> 
>>>> About a year ago, I set up a new Gnucash data file and chart of
>> accounts.
>>>> I remember making some mistakes setting up the opening balances. I
>>>> recollect having problems changing the Opening Balance entries and
>> having
>>>> to edit the Opening Balances account (from the Accounts tab->Opening
>>>> Balances->Edit) and changing something to make the entries editable.
>>>> 
>>>> But I cannot reproduce it now.
>>>> 
>>>> Will
>>>> 
>>>> On 2021 Dec 29, at 12-29 20:41:13, Rogier F. van Vlissingen <
>>>> vliscony at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hi, thanks for that, but I cannot find any mechanism to "unlock" a read
>>>> only account, nor does there seem to be anything in the manual about
>>>> "unlocking?" Please clarify.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 9:29 PM William Prescott <
>> will at theprescotts.com
>>>> <mailto:will at theprescotts.com>> wrote:
>>>> I'm not sure if this is relevant …
>>>> 
>>>> By default, the Opening Balance account is locked and transactions are
>>>> only created there when you create a new account and give it an opening
>>>> balance. But you can unlock the Opening Balance account and then
>> adjust the
>>>> transactions or add or delete them like in any other account.
>>>> 
>>>> Will
>>>> 
>>>> On 2021 Dec 29, at 12-29 18:52:16, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us
>> <mailto:
>>>> jralls at ceridwen.us>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Dec 29, 2021, at 4:08 PM, Rogier F. van Vlissingen <
>>>> vliscony at gmail.com <mailto: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
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