[GNC] Why or why not to do year-end closing journal entries? (Close Books?)

[Eric Chapman]

Hi, again.

I think I read a discussion on the list about this, but now I cannot 
find it.

I searched the PDF for these things: "year-end", "year end", "closing", 
"end of the year". I was surprised how little I found.

I found this at "Duplicating an Account Hierarchy":

    In some cases, it might be useful to duplicate the structure of an
    existing data file in a new file. For example, you might want to try
    out new accounting techniques without corrupting your actual
    accounting data, or you might need to follow accounting guidelines
    that require you to close your books at the end of the year and
    begin each year with a fresh set of books.

Other than that I also found this at "Other Considerations for Expense 
Accounts":

    One point to consider is that as your use of GnuCash continues, the
    balances in these accounts will grow, since there are usually very
    few credit transactions that reduce the balances. There is nothing
    wrong with this situation, but some users may wish to clear the
    balances in their expense accounts periodically. Zeroing
    transactions can be entered that transfer the balance of the account
    to an Equity account. GnuCash includes a Closing Books procedure
    that includes zeroing out expense accounts. Keep in mind that this
    is not necessary, and that if you need to gather information on a
    given expense account, you can use various reports to extract that
    data without zeroing the account out.

(1) I'm from an old school accounting background, so I like the idea of 
closing the books after all journal entries have been made for a fiscal 
year. Is there a reason I should not do that?

(2) Is the "Closing Books procedure" referred to above the one under the 
Tools menu called "Close Books"? I even searched the PDF documentation 
for "close books" thinking that surely if there is a menu command named 
that, then there will be info on how it's used and what it does, but 
I've not found anything.

Once again I could use your advice.

And I remain grateful to the developers and the community of helpful 
souls who seem very patient with us newbies to GnuCash

-- 
Eric Chapman
GnuCash 4.13 on MacOS 14.1 Sonoma running on an Apple M3 Max computer.