Hello,

For someone who uses Beancount to keep the books of a small company, I was 
wondering what is the correct convention for declaring dividends?

After reading about this in general accounting documents, it seems like in 
Beancount one should add to the Equity:Earnings:Previous account, and 
subtract from a Liabilities:Dividends-Payable account.

However, in Beancount the Equity:Earnings:Previous account is a sort of 
"virtual" account which is usually not opened in the journal, whose balance 
is auto-generated. If I do open that account so that I'm able to write 
transactions to it, its balance is always visible in Fava's balance sheet, 
which I'm not sure, but it looks a bit odd.

And if I use a different equity account, eg. Equity:Dividends, then the 
Equity:Earnings:Previous balance doesn't get calculated correctly, ie. it 
looks as though the company has a delicious balance of previous earnings 
when it has actually declared them as dividends.


Thanks,
Aragon

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