Re: Close books trashes Income Statement and Net Income on Balance Sheet

[Mike or Penny Novack]

You can disagree all you want, but you're still wrong. ;) The GAAP
method to close the books is to create a fake date (or 'invalid' date)
that sits between the periods.  That's what most accountants and
large-scale accounting programs do.  You might dislike it, but it's the
way the world works.

Maybe needs more explanation? The reason many of you see "fake" is that 
you assumed that a "fiscal date" HAD to be a "calendar date". Or where 
the same data as calendar date is used for fiscal date assumed that 
meant they had magically become the some thing.

The properties you NEED for fiscal dates:
a) Unique.
b) Ordered

Imagine the following rules:
a) The ID of a an ordinary fiscal date will be the calendar date. All 
fiscal transactions will occur on an ordinary fiscal date.
b) The ID of a special fiscal date will be the ID of the preceding 
(ordinary) fiscal date with a "S" appended. No fiscal transactions 
allowed on a special fiscal date, just things like closing the books.
c) Only transactions occurring on ordinary fiscal dates are considered 
in reports.

Michael D. Novack, FLMI


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