[GNC] Account setup

[Michael or Penny Novack]

> E.g. "retained earnings" has a balance, but in the set up screen there is a
> greyed out "zero" and I cannot set up the opening balance. Can I edit that
> later?
>
> I tried this before, but was never able to figure it out.


You did NOT tell us the "state" of the books of this business. And you 
said trial balance. When I have done this:

a) I closed the (old) books << so the TEMPORARY income and expense 
accounts would have zero balances. Then I only had to enter the STANDING 
accounts and for that would use the post closing Balance Sheet. At this 
point there would be NO "retained earnings" of the virtual sort.

b) BUT -- if you mean "retained earnings" as an actual account (a 
corporation that paid dividends only from "earnings" might have that) 
please note that this is a different thing than the "retained earnings" 
VIRTUAL account of gnucash << that's the net of all the UNCLOSED income 
and expense accounts appearing on the balance sheet >> If you do need an 
actual "retained earnings" account in addition to this just create it 
with a different name to avoid confusion. If you do a periodic "close 
the books" and want the net here (like I said, a corporation might want 
this) you'll probably have to do the close the books operation manually 
(not using the gnucash feature.

I learned bookkeeping in the pen and ink on paper days long before we 
had computers to assist us.

Michael D Novack