The right answer will be to submit the Transaction Report to the accountant, have him/her calculate the Retained Earnings and Shareholder Distribution for you, then you pay your shareholders via Assets:Bank/Cash -> Liability:Shareholder (and later Liability:Shareholder -> Expenses:Shareholder Dividends I guess?)
I also think you'd close the books to an Equity:Retained Earnings account rather than Liability:Retained Earnings. I think untold surprises will arise if closing books to Liability. IMHO Balance Sheet's Retained Earnings seems designed to be Net Income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_income That's all I know. On Tue, 10 Mar 2020 at 15:29, Brian via gnucash-user < [email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, 10 Mar 2020 at 01:02, Brian via gnucash-user < > > [email protected]> wrote: > > > > > I'm wondering if GNUCash is actually calculating RETAINED EARNINGS > > > properly. Because after issuing a distribution to shareholder the > > > Retaining Earning calculation increased by Net Income but did not > > > decrease by Asset:Cash which was debited and credited to > > > Equity:Shareholder Distribution. > > > > > > > The calculation of Retained Earnings and Unrealized Gains in the > > Balance Sheet is rather primitive, and has been as such since nearly > > forever. > > > > Retained Earnings = sum total of income less expenses at the > > balance-sheet date. > > Unrealized Gains = sum total of (asset-liability) value, minus sum > > total of (asset-liability) cost. > > Christopher, then I believe you are saying to get a proper "retained > earnings", which recognizes the reduction of Assets:Cash and increase to > Liability:Shareholder distribution, that one would need to properly > close the books by moving income and expense to a Liability:Retained > Earnings sub-account? > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > [email protected] > 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. > _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] 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.
