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

[R Losey]

On Sun, Dec 22, 2024 at 12:10 PM Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) <
stan+gc at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> 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.
>

The idea of doing the transfers on 31 Dec and then doing reports through 30
Dec came from this group. I supposed one could do the transfers on 01 Jan
and just ensure that reports start on 02 Jan. I think the FYnnnn was
suggested here, too.



> 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".
>

The FYnnnn account is the parent of the yyyyIncome and yyyyExpense
accounts. With those sub-accounts, I can see at a glance the income for a
year, and the expense for a year, and the net change for that year; there
is probably a report that does this, but it's useful to me to just look at
it.

I confess: I haven't used the GC menu item yet -- I don't know what it does
(I supposed I should create a copy of my records and play with it). Last
year was the first year  I did this, and I went back and closed out each
prior year, too, so the menu Close wasn't an option. I just go through each
Income and Expense account and transfer the end-of-year total to the
appropriate yyyyIncome or yyyyExpense account.

So far, it has served my needs well, but I feel as if I'm a latecomer to
doing this, and I'll learn and adapt.

-- 
_________________________________
Richard Losey
rlosey at gmail.com
Micah 6:8