[GNC] XML or database?

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 11/7/2022 7:11 PM, Kevin Buckley wrote:

>>> Long ago in my Quicken days, I would generally keep about 3 years of  data
>>> and then "archive" transactions older than that... I don't know if GnuCash
>>> has (or needs) any similar feature.
>> For what it's worth, I have data going back to like 2007 in my file.
>> GnuCash does not really have an "archive" function (although there have
>> been 3rd party tools that do that.
> Whilst there's no explict archive functionality, if you are using XML files,
> there's nothing to stop you copying your current file, and then opening
> up the copy and removing all transactions before a certain date.
>
> Time consuming, yes: but easily do-able.

In the "old days" of pen and ink on paper accounting, it was common to 
open new books each year. They were, after all, bound volumes of finite 
size, that's why we say "the books". The process was:

a) Do a "close the books" operation with all income and expense accounts 
closed to equity. They are, after all, temporary accounts of fundamental 
type equity. Usually this would be through first closing them to another 
temporary account of type equity (profit and loss) and then THAT closed 
to equity by the net profit or loss to bring into balance.

b) At this point the only accounts with non-zero balances would be the 
standing accounts of types asset, liability, and equity. Run the Balance 
Sheet report..

c) Open the books for the new accounting period --- create the CoA with 
all zero amounts and then the first transaction is the opening 
transaction from the balance sheet << it would be a giant transaction, 
split on both the debit and credit sides.

You can do this with gnucash too. It is time consuming and a lot of work 
if/f you have lots of accounts of type asset, liability, and equity. 
Otherwise it is a snap.

Michael D Novack