[GNC] Order of accounts when closing the book

[Steve Butler]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 21:04 R Losey <rlosey at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2025 at 12:14 PM Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) <
> stan+gc at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>> >> On 6/10/2025 12:36 AM, Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) wrote:
>> >>> The Close the Book tool generates two transactions, one for all income
>> >>> accounts and the other for all expense accounts. The accounts are not
>> in
>> >>> alphabetical order in either transaction, nor are they in Account Code
>> >>> order, nor arranged by the values of the splits.
>> >>>
>> >>> They _seem_ random, but I can't imagine they really are. Can anyone
>> tell
>> >>> me (a) how they're actually sorted, and (b) how I can get them in
>> >>> Account Code order?
>> Thanks, Stephen. I was afraid that was the answer.
>>
>> I guess what I'll need to do is set up a scheduled transaction with one
>> simple transaction per income or expense account. I can make them show
>> up in the desired order by placing the Account Code in the Num field. Of
>> course I'll have to remember to change the SX every time I add or move
>> an income or expense account, and at the end of the year I'll have to
>> enter the appropriate balances manually. That all seems like a lot of
>> work, with plenty of room for mistakes.
>>
>> Although ... When HTML was a lot newer, I hung out in the HTML and CSS
>> newsgroups. Very often, someone would post a requirement and ask how to
>> accomplish it, and the answer was "stop wanting that" because the
>> then-current HTML and CSS specs didn't provide an answer. Maybe the
>> right answer to my query about getting closing entries in account-code
>> order is "stop wanting that". Your point about a new release of the
>> software possibly changing its own strategy is a good one; I too have
>> seen that happen from time to time.
>>
>> (Before I go any further, I should say that I use GC for my personal
>> accounting, not for any business or other organization. So I'm free to
>> choose the bookkeeping practices that give me the kinds of information I
>> want to know.)
>>
>> I need to think about just what I hope to gain by closing the books
>> every year. And it may be part of a larger context that I need to
>> resolve also. Here's what I mean by that.
>>         When I learned bookkeeping, we distinguished between ordinary
>> income or
>> loss) and extraordinary items. Ordinary income was the result of normal
>> recurring activities, what a business would call day-to-day operations.
>> Extraordinary items were items that recurred seldom or never and would
>> distort the computation of net income if they were included, like
>> getting a significant legacy or having your house flood. Extraordinary
>> Items was an equity account; it got closed into the top-level equity
>> account and didn't appear in the income statement except perhaps as a
>> footnote.
>>         But ultimately, both Ordinary Income and Extraordinary Items
>> affect
>> total equity, whether they get closed into the top-level Equity account
>> or not. I need to think carefully about whether keeping Extraordinary
>> Items in Equities is really the right thing to do in my situation. Then,
>> I suspect, I'll also know whether to close the books every year, and if
>> so whether  I can use "Tools » Close Books" or need to do the work
>> manually.
>>
>
> When I first saw your question, I was wondering why you wanted a
> particular order. I started closing out the books a couple of years ago,
> and it has been helpful, but I've never really given the order any thought.
> When I want to see how a particular Income or Expense item did, I go to
> that account and look there for the end-of-year closeouts.
>
> By the way, how do you deal with whole year reports? If you close the
> books on 31 Dec of a year, and do a 01 Jan - 31 Dec year, the Income and
> Expenses will be zero. I do my reports from 01 Jan - 30 Dec, which means
> that any transactions that occur on 31 Dec I change the date to 30 Dec. I
> got that idea from this group, but perhaps you have a better
> --
>

The reports (at least the ones I use including P&L) ignore the closing
transactions.  Many have an option to include them.   So not a problem to
include the last day of the year.

>