On Wednesday, January 10th, 2024 at 03:14, Grace <gr...@bernevyl.com> wrote: > > Hello, > > I am just wondering how folks are dealing with starting a new year? > > Finishing 2023 I think is easy. You just stop using it. > > However, how do I start 2024 with the finishing balances of 2023? Do I > have set up a brand new set of accounts, or is there a way of doing this > that I have not found? > > Grace
If you are 1) Saving your GnuCash files as uncompressed XML 2) Happy editing files in a TXT editor, then the following may be of some use then it's not too hard to start over and, as long as you keep a copy of the "previous year" then you can't lose anything when trying it out. Create a new tree of accounts fron (let's say ongoing.gnucash) File->Export-Export Accounts (save as account_tree.gnucash) Copy account_tree.gnucash to new_yeargnucash Copy ongoing.gnucash to old_year.gnucash The next bits are probably best viewed in a monospcaed font as I have tried to line up the actions in each of the files: old_year.gnucash new_year.gnucash Grab from <gnc:template-transactions> to last </gnc:schedxaction> </gnc:book> Add to end of file Grab the <gnc:count-data cd:type="schedxaction">5</gnc:count-data> count data line for the schedexaction Add after the <gnc:count-data cd:type="commodity"> <gnc:count-data cd:type="account"> lines Grab the two lines <gnc:count-data cd:type="book">1</gnc:count-data> <gnc:book version="2.0.0"> Add before the <gnc:count-data cd:type="commodity"> <gnc:count-data cd:type="account"> lines so as to balance the closing gnc:book Need to disable the SchedTXNs in the old file, which you can do, one-at-a-time, from within GnuCash of by editing the XML and Replace every <sx:enabled>y</sx:enabled> with <sx:enabled>n</sx:enabled> Open up ongoing.gnucash in GnuCash Create a report from the "Account Summary" template that will give you all of the Opening blanaces you need to populate the new file. In the report creation dialog, I set the following: Tab:General Change the date to the last date of the previous period Tab:Accounts Make the level of subaccounts "All" Only need Assets & Liabilities and Children Tab:Display Uncheck Include accounts with zero balances Tab:Commodities Report's Currency: GBP (Just make sure it's the files default currency) Price Source: Most Recent Export as old_year-report-acc_sum.html Open up new_year.gnucash in GnuCash Enter the various Opening Balances with reference to your HTML report file. Save new_year.gnucash That's it. GnuCash on opening your new file, will do a very good job of adding in any "missing" bits, when it comes to save the new file for the first time. Aside: if you keep making copies of the new_year.gnucash before you operate on it, you will be able to see what Gnucash is doing to it. GnuCash is an incredible program in that respect: the authors deserve a lot of credit for their work. FWIW, people who want to try and get a better understanding of the format of a Gnucash XML file could do a lot worse than to create a brand new file, with a set of minimal accounts, enter one tranaction, and maybe one commodity and commodity price, and squirrel that file away for future reference. I hope that helps and/or gives you something upon which to create your own approach, although, as many folk on here will tell you, you may not need to have seperate files for seperate years, but if you want to, then you can do. _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.