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

[Geoff]

Eric, you can still do this if you close the books each year:

 > 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.

Be brave! Try it and see for yourself ;--)

Regards

Geoff
=====

On 5/12/2023 12:07 pm, Eric Chapman wrote:
> 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 
> 
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