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

[Eric Chapman]

Hi, Geoff,

OK, it looks as if it's just as good not to close the books, if, e.g., I 
might want to run an income statement comparing 2022 and 2023.

Eric

Geoff or anyone else,

However, does that mean that every time I look at the "Accounts" tab I 
will see ever-growing amounts that reflect transactions from "Day 1" of 
starting to use GnuCash? And, correspondingly, I'll have to run a 
current year income statement report to see what I was able to see at a 
glance in Year 1? Seems less than ideal, but …

Thanks,

Eric

On 12/4/23 19:40, Geoff wrote:
> Hi Eric
>
> To close or not to close is entirely a personal decision.
>
> From https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Closing_Books
> "Using Close Book Option
> Since 2.2.4, there has been a menu item for closing the books under 
> {Tools->Close Book}. This item creates two zeroing transactions (one 
> for expense accounts, one for income accounts). Each account in those 
> portions of the accounts tree is reset to zero by transferring from 
> the equity account of your choosing."
>
> Try it yourself and see.  It is a non-destructive process that you can 
> simply cancel, either by deleting the two transactions it generates in 
> the Equity account you nominated, or closing without saving.
>
> If you are interested in what other people do, this topic is discussed 
> periodically:
>
> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2022-January/099274.html
>
> Regards
>
> Geoff