[GNC] End of year

[gnucash at 4forl1st5.slmail.me]

On Wednesday, January 31st, 2024 at 01:12, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
>
> On 1/29/24 8:04 AM, Mahon Finbar via gnucash-user wrote:
> 
> > OK, I want to do it properly, but I had an email crash and .....
> > 
> > So, can someone point me or send me the 'how to' for doing an end of
> > year process, where I can 'inherit' the names from the autocomplete
> > from the previous years?
> 
> You can't. I thought we described that already.

Not strictly true.
 
> If you start a new file/account each year, you will lose all
> auto-complete from the previous year's entries.
> 
> The auto-complete list is generated on the fly from the other
> transactions in the register you have open at that time. If that
> register doesn't contain previous transactions because you started
> a new year, then you don't get auto-complete suggestions.

As Adrien points out, in order to have auto-complete, you need to have
some "previous" transactions to auto-complete against

However, if you have created a new, empty tree of accounts, and you
have also exported a CSV of transactions, then you should be able to 
import those old transactions, so as to give you something to auto-
complete against.

Clearly though, you don't need multiple tranaactions that have the
same name (Description field) because you only need one to be able
to autocomplete against it.

So the "trick" would be editing the CSV file so that you only have 
one transaction per auto-complete target that gets imported, and 
then deleting "old" entries, once you have your first autocompleted 
one for the new period, from within GnuCash itself.

The amount of work required depends on how many "proto-transactions"
you want to be able to autocomplete from, but it should be possible,
however, it's not for everyone, and if you don't feel comfortable
editing either CSV files, or the GnuCash files, when saved as XML,
then make lots of backups as you work out what works best for you.

Note that this approach is akin to copying your old GnuCash file
to a new one and then deleting all the old tranactions, one at a
time, from with the GUI front-end. 

I could even suggest that, once you have an exported CSV file of
transactions, you might be able, simply by changing the dates in 
it, to re-use the same "common transactions" file every time you 
start a new GnuCash file.

Alternatively, you might even maintain a second Gnucash file, which
just has one transaction per auto-complete target, to which you add
new ones as you encounter them in your ongoing accounts, and export
your proto-transactions to CSV from that.

So, make some backups; make one more set of backups, and then start
experimenting.

The bottom line is, whilst it is true that the vast majority of GnuCash 
users will only ever see, and operate on, their charts of accounts and 
transactions through the GUI front-end, underneath it all, it is just 
editable plain text, and you can use that to your advantage.

HTH