On 2/22/2018 4:21 PM, Dan Carpenter wrote:
Adrien, general accounting principles close the books at the end of the fiscal
year. This process in most accounting software updates the Equity with the
profit or loss balances and then zeros the income and expense accounts to begin
fresh for the new year. I am just starting with testing this software, but
most software retains “last year data” in a separate file or field within the
data record for comparative reporting of this month/last month ; this year/last
year etc.
Gnucash (without doing a"close the books")
a) Have last year's data in a separate file << just make a copy of the
file at an appropriate time >>
b) Can still produce the reports for any prior time period << you can
(if you lost them) recreate the previous period's reports from the
CURRENT data file >>
c) And you can close the books in the old pen and ink on paper way too
if that is what you want to do. Either using the function or totally
manually.
This is a matter of understanding the HISTORY of bookkeeping. It was the
PROCESS of closing the books that created the report we call "profit and
loss" << the report WAS another temporary account used in the process of
closing* >> And of course they needed a method of keeping the physical
books small enough to handle << a 10,000 page book would be real awkward >>
Michael
* The individual income and expense accounts were not closed directly to
equity. They were closed to this special "profit and loss" account and
then THAT was closed to equity by the net profit or loss. BTW, this
wasn't just back in the "dark ages". I am old enough to have learned
doing it this way.
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
