I finally get it -- I *CAN* add manual entries balanced against the Equity:Earnings:Current account to register whatever equity transfers I need; I just need to explicitly open it first!
This is because whenever I run a report with a CLEAR it will generate the closing transactions (for the sake of the report) into that special `Equity:Earnings:Current` (no problem at all that the account already existed before running the report!). Thank you all for helping me to the point of clarity :D Best, - Dan On Thursday, March 17, 2022 at 12:47:58 AM UTC-4 Dan Schultz wrote: > > The idea of "close at any time" just means that the calculation for net > income and transfer to a summarized set of equity accounts happens at the > time of reporting and is automated. > > I had interpreted this line (see below) from Scott's email as the reason > why the manual entries are ideally avoided, but appreciate I may not > understand (I apologize / thanks for bearing with me): > > > You could, but there's no need to, explicitly zero out income and > expenses, but if you chose to do that it locks you into fixed schedule > reporting because a report that spans the end of the fiscal year will have > the odd artifacts of the zeroing transactions. > > To confirm I'm understanding, if I run: > > ``` > SELECT account, sum(position) FROM OPEN ON 2017-01-01 CLOSE ON 2018-01-01 > WHERE account ~ "Income|Expenses" GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1; > ``` > > I get that beautiful report which tells me my income and expenses for 2017 > > If I were to add manual entries at the end of the fiscal year, wouldn't I > end up dirtying that report? I'd need to balance the equity changes > against the net profit / Equity:Earnings:Current, (which would require me > manually zeroing out the income / expense accounts) right? > > Just a sanity check: when we're talking about querying we aren't talking > about something I do *in* the register / can write followup transactions > against, right? I am under the impression that the book closing queries > don't actually translate to closed positions outside of the query's output. > > Best, > - Dan > > On Thursday, March 17, 2022 at 12:10:01 AM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote: > >> The idea of "close at any time" just means that the calculation for net >> income and transfer to a summarized set of equity accounts happens at the >> time of reporting and is automated. Nothing prevents you from adding equity >> accounts and creating manual entries at the end of your fiscal year. >> >> >> On Thu, Mar 17, 2022 at 12:03 AM Dan Schultz <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Thank you both -- this makes sense (and I'm finally getting through the >>> query language documentation which, as I believe / hope I'm correctly >>> understanding, is where that closing-from-whatever-date would occur!) >>> >>> As a followup: how would I handle account for changes to equity with >>> this approach? To be clear I'm talking about net profit that hasn't be >>> distributed / the asset still exists in the company. >>> >>> Specifically, we report allocations for each partner to tax authorities >>> based on an annual reporting period; this is where our targeted allocation >>> formulas kick in, etc. >>> >>> I'm having trouble meshing the "close any time" concept with the ability >>> to track that equity allocation -- particularly in a situation where >>> partners might join or leave over time, or might have different targeted >>> allocations of a given annual profit. >>> >>> I hope the problem / question makes sense. >>> >>> Note: one idea I had is that maybe I need to just create parallel >>> register purely to track equity. It would ONLY track contributions, >>> distributions, balanced against cash -- and end-of-year allocations >>> balanced against {some well named account}. The separation and slight >>> duplication makes this an imperfect concept... but I'd love to know if it's >>> my best bet! >>> >>> Or... is there some way to give beancount a "hint" about how I want >>> equity to get distributed when books close for a given period (e.g. a set >>> of transactions against the `Equity:Earnings:Current` that only gets >>> recognized when running CLEAR queries?) >>> >>> On Wednesday, March 16, 2022 at 10:54:47 PM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote: >>> >>>> +1 to all that >>>> >>>> >>>> On Wed, Mar 16, 2022 at 5:35 PM Scott <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I'm relatively new to beancount, so I have a limited picture at this >>>>> point, but here's my understanding: >>>>> >>>>> beancount is designed to allow closing of the books at arbitrary >>>>> points in time. The benefit of this is that you can run reports for >>>>> whatever time period you'd like and have the effect of that being the >>>>> 'accounting period'. The downside to this is that since there's no >>>>> formal/explicit closing of the books, there are not necessarily fixed >>>>> journal entries corresponding to that action. This means that as an >>>>> auditing tool, you need to be a bit careful with beancount, because (for >>>>> better and worse) there's nothing to guarantee that you won't/can't >>>>> modify >>>>> the journal after the end of the reporting period. >>>>> >>>>> I imagine, that you'd thus want to put your ledger under version >>>>> control, and check it in at the end of the fiscal year. The reports for >>>>> the >>>>> fiscal year would show revenue and you'd then draw from assets to pay >>>>> shareholders accordingly. You could, but there's no need to, explicitly >>>>> zero out income and expenses, but if you chose to do that it locks you >>>>> into >>>>> fixed schedule reporting because a report that spans the end of the >>>>> fiscal >>>>> year will have the odd artifacts of the zeroing transactions. >>>>> >>>>> Clearly my understanding is limited ;) But I'm also using beancount >>>>> for a small business, so hopefully others will weigh in if I'm too far >>>>> off >>>>> the mark. >>>>> >>>>> Cheers, >>>>> -Scott >>>>> >>>>> On Wednesday, March 16, 2022 at 9:07:39 AM UTC-7 [email protected] >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> I'm looking to close the books for a pay period (zero-out the income >>>>>> / expense accounts into a revenue summary account so I can distribute >>>>>> equity among my partners). >>>>>> >>>>>> I saw some mention that there is the concept of "clearing", which >>>>>> would automatically generate transactions to close the books for a given >>>>>> pay period but I'm not seeing it documented anywhere. >>>>>> >>>>>> Is there a ledger entry I can use to signal the end of a period which >>>>>> would trigger that kind of action; or maybe a command / plugin folks use >>>>>> to >>>>>> generates the needed transactions? >>>>>> >>>>>> Best, >>>>>> - Dan >>>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>>> Groups "Beancount" group. >>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>>>> an email to [email protected]. >>>>> To view this discussion on the web visit >>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/5a38c51b-facd-4ed5-97e2-b63f2efb4e18n%40googlegroups.com >>>>> >>>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/5a38c51b-facd-4ed5-97e2-b63f2efb4e18n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >>>>> . >>>>> >>>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Beancount" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to [email protected]. >>> >> To view this discussion on the web visit >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/46c48ad2-2502-4a9c-bdc8-56a71cd4ce11n%40googlegroups.com >>> >>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/46c48ad2-2502-4a9c-bdc8-56a71cd4ce11n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >>> . >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. 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