[GNC] How to "lock" expenses from previous year?

[Adrien Monteleone]

That will only keep you from editing those reconciled transactions 
without receiving a warning. (that is, you *can* still edit them, they 
are not 'locked' but you will get a warning about editing a reconciled 
transaction, which you can override, and also, dismiss the warning, 
which means you won't see it next time you try editing a reconciled 
transaction)

There is a read-only threshold, under File > Preferences but it is quite 
limited as it is a sliding-window by number of previous days. So you'd 
have to change it each and every day as the year went on. And that 
applies to all accounts, not just some.

An alternative is to create an archive folder with a copy of the book, 
and possibly the annual reports in PDF form. That way if you ever needed 
to go back to see if you inadvertently edited something, you'd have a 
backup at that state to verify changes. Having a good backup strategy 
helps too.

You can also make accounts placeholders which prevents *new* 
transactions from being entered, but that doesn't stop you from editing 
previous transactions.

Otherwise, no, you can't lock accounts from editing.

Regards,
Adrien

On 12/4/23 8:23 PM, Eric Chapman wrote:
> Once I'm sure I'm done with 2022 and the data is not going to change, is 
> there a good way to lock the income/expense accounts so I do not 
> accidentally post something to a previous year?
> 
> Somewhere in the manual I saw something that said you can "reconcile" 
> income & expense accounts to lock them:
> 
>     Because expense accounts are generated entirely by you, there are no
>     statements against which you would reconcile your data. Therefore,
>     there is technically nothing to reconcile. You can, of course use
>     the reconcile process for expense accounts, which will lock the
>     transactions for future editing.
> 
> Anybody doing that? Any advice on best practices? I'd like to do it all 
> in one fell swoop – the entire year at once.