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

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 12/4/2023 8:07 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 


But THAT would unlikely be a good reason unless you were not regularly 
running/storing such reports.

Thus for every set of books I keep, that entity has a directory, with 
sub directories under it. One for the books (and the logs, etc.) and one 
for "financial reports". After a report is run, export to there. So you 
would have all back reports to compare.

But also, a matter of dates. IF you have a YE date that is not a fiscal 
date (no external transactions on that date) you could use that date for 
the close the books transactions. For example, Jan 1st is a bank holiday 
so you could use that date. You could still run an end of the year 
income statement/P&L at the end of business 12/31.

Note that some of us closing the books would be doing it for entities 
where we would do it manually, not using the the tool << for example, 
"pass through" entities, so we want to distribute gains and losses to 
accounts under equity, not just to equity itself. >>

Michael D Novack