[GNC] Closing books (was Re: Modifying the Register)

[Stan Brown (using GC 4.14)]

On 2024-12-21 18:54, R Losey wrote:
> However, some people enjoy zeroing Income and Expenses each year to Equity
> (I learned about it last year, and tried it, and I really like the benefits
> I get from it). For me, I created a FYnnnn account under Equity, and then
> and an "yyyyIncome" and "yyyyExpense" sub-accounts under the
> FYnnnn account. All expenses have their  balances as of 31 Dec transferred
> to the "nnnnExpense" account and all the income accounts have their balance
> as of 31 Dec transferred to "nnnnIncome".
>
> [As people here have pointed out, the only small drawback is that you
> generally don't want to have income/expenses on 31 Dec - so that when
> reports are run, the end of December (or the end of the year) should be set
> to 30 Dec. If you use 31 Dec, it will include the equity transfer, and the
> numbers reported will be zero. But I can live with the workaround.]

This is an interesting idea. I do close the books on Dec 31 (well,
_as_of_ Dec 31 but entered a couple of days after), because I like
seeing how overall ordinary net income or loss, plus one-shot items like
a house sale or HVAC replacement, affected equity. But I never thought
of turning Equity into a placeholder parent with FYnnnn children.

Can you say a bit more about the purpose of the yyyyIncome and
yyyyExpense sub-sub accounts? If you close the books, won't there be
just one transaction a year in each of those? Or do you close the books
manually, entering one transaction per income or expense account, as
opposed to using the GC menu item Tools » Close Book? That would let you
control the order of entries, unlike the GC menu "Close Book".


Stan Brown
Tehachapi, CA, USA
https://BrownMath.com/