[GNC] Removing old transactions

[Ken Pyzik]

I'll hop in here because, I have done several different approaches for 
several different people.  All worked out fine.  There are a number of 
ways to skin this cat.  What is key is this:   WHAT is it that you 
actually want the file to contain, when you are finished with your 
"maintenance" routine?

As others have already pointed out - if you want a separate book for 
each year, then save the file and do just that -- make each year 
separate.   But I have another person I work with who does this -- he 
keeps the running balance for all his asset and liability accounts -- 
and only zero's out his income and expense accounts by doing a closing 
entry at the end of the year.  For example, for this year you have an 
expense account where you had 12 payments (gas bill, electric bill, any 
utility bill).  You may want to save the amount that you spent on that 
utility that year -- and may want to start at 0 come the first of the 
next year.  Enter a closing entry for the amount and make a 
contra-account (another account called closing account or gain/loss for 
the year) that takes the second part of that transaction.  Now that 
expense account has a 0 balance on 1/1 of the new year.  As you enter 
transactions after 1/1, the balance in that account will reflect the 
actual expense or income for that new year since you are starting at 0.

So that is one way to zero out accounts WITHOUT deleting any 
transactions.

Now, if you truly just want a file with older transactions and a new 
file with only the most recent, you can do a similar closeout procedure 
like I described about and/or you could start a new file with an AS OF 
date, moving over the existing balances that you have as of that date.

Lastly, you can make a copy of your current file and delete transactions 
as of a certain date being mindful of the balances you have to get a "as 
of date" state.  You then can go back to your original file and remove 
those transactions if that is what you want to do.

HERE IS THE KEY:  GnuCash is very flexible in how you want to handle 
your data file structure.  There are little, if any limitations.  It all 
depends what you want the end state to look like.  Once you decide that 
- you can then engineer or reverse engineer to that state -- keeping in 
mind what the balances of those accounts are at the point in time that 
you are looking for.   BUT... make sure you understand that every entry 
must have a corresponding second account to send the second part of that 
entry -- otherwise you end of with a lot of items in an imbalance 
account.

Hope this makes sense.

Ken

------ Original Message ------
>From "Michael or Penny Novack via gnucash-user" 
<gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
To gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Date 12/17/2025 4:36:18 PM
Subject Re: [GNC] Removing old transactions

>On 12/17/2025 6:11 PM, Christopher Treen wrote:
>>I might be wrong here, [and I haven't tried it], but what about FILE - EXPORT - Export Account Tree to CSV.
>>Create a new file called 2026 - Import your tree - On Dec 31st note the ending balances in the old file and update your brand new file.
>>And keep backups just in case! Happy New Year!
>>
>>Chris
>
>Note that this is mimicking the old days of pen and ink on paper (in bound volumes -- that's why we call financial records  BOOKS). So quite common, new year, new volumes (remember, they did a "close the books" operations so all income and expense accounts zeroed out to equity)
>
>IF you want to keep only a few years data, the EASIEST way would be to mimic that, new year, new set of books (new file) keeping as many of these years as you care to. Want to see a transaction from back in 2021, you open THAT set of books << use YEAR as part of the file name >> You WOULD be wanting to do a "close the books" as part of year end processing.
>
>Notice that you are NOT deleting anything.
>
>Michael D Novack
>
>PS: Storage being cheap, I'd keep ALL years, at least on backup medium
>
>
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