Hi! Thanks for resurrecting this thread. Here it is in order, probably required reading for anyone else to make sense of this: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/hledger/TeBp1ymz1RA/discussion <https://groups.google.com/d/topic/hledger/TeBp1ymz1RA/discussion>
More recent notes: 1. hledger's add-on commands are more discoverable and easier to install now (http://hledger.org/manual.html#experimental-add-ons <http://hledger.org/manual.html#experimental-add-ons>, http://hledger.org/download.html#d <http://hledger.org/download.html#d>) 2. hledger's equity command has been improved slightly, and now always generates valid journal entries 3. summarising accountingtools.com <http://accountingtools.com/>: in traditional accounting, the "close the books" operation moves revenue and expense balances into the "equity:retained earnings" account, optionally via an "income summary" account, in order to see the total net income for a period. 4. My "zero out assets/liabilities at file boundary" operation, in order to preserve balances in single and multi-file reporting, is a different operation, though it is at least mechanically similar. 5. In h/ledger, instead of "closing the books" we normally just filter revenues/expenses by date. Eg: hledger bal -p 2016 revenues expenses 6. But if we did want to close the books, the hledger-equity command can do it. Zero out revenues/expenses, keep only the closing balances transaction, and change the last posting to "equity:retained earnings", eg: hledger-equity -f 2016.journal -e 2017/1/1 revenues expenses | hledger -I -f- print desc:closing --alias '/closing balances/=retained earnings' 7. Now I see why the command is named "equity", and I think that name is ok. 8. Having recently done a bunch of fixes in old journal files, where I had to update the closing and opening entries in each intervening year file, I am finding the "zero out assets/liabilities at file boundary" approach a bit tedious. Is there a better way ? Reminder, the main goal is to preserve correct asset/liability balances in both single-file and multi-file reports. I thought of dropping the "closing balances" transaction and having a magical "opening balances" transaction that's used only when it's an account's first posting. Pro: half as much boilerplate and updating when fixing old transactions, and when starting a new journal. Con: more magical, ending balances are no longer recorded and asserted at file end. Thoughts ? > On Mar 8, 2017, at 12:07 AM, André Fincato <a.finc...@gmail.com> wrote: > > `clopening` then, also by reading what it means through the link you shared, > seems a good option. > > Regarding the option to make it a standard command: I think it might > potentially be used more if you document it as part of the set of options > through which you can interact with you hledger.journal, so I would lean > toward including it. > > I will check again `hledger-equity.hs` tomorrow. Completely forgot about this > thread. > > Which prompts me to say that, I find it very hard to come and check this > google group to keep up with things. Not sure where to move it, though, > beside making an /r/hledger. But if other people find it easier to discuss > here, I understand also that. > > Also, is the irc channel still active? Would be curious to hang around there > every now and then. > > On Sunday, January 1, 2017 at 6:50:00 PM UTC+1, Simon Michael (sm) wrote: > Thanks for the input André. > > I didn't understand how installing the add-on failed. Any more details ? > > Also, although I've been using and talking about these matched > assets/liabilities to and from zero transactions at year file boundaries for > years, until now I haven't heard of anybody else doing the same thing. Is > the technique useful enough to be a built-in command, or is everybody else > doing something different ? (for those of you just tuning in: see the > hledger-equity doc below for the use case). > > Re two commands rather than one, I thought that running the "open" command > against the old journal might be a bit non-obvious: > > hledger close -f 2016.journal assets liabilities # "makes sense" > hledger open -f 2016.journal assets liabilities # "weird, aren't I opening > a 2017 journal ?" > > Also, I thought that you would pretty much always be running "close" and then > "open", so why not make it a more convenient single command. > > If two commands, "open" and "close" are nice easy words, but too overloaded > with other meanings, probably (?): > > 1. "Closing the books" has a definite meaning in accounting (see below) > 2. opening and closing is a familiar operation on real-world accounts > (creating and destroying) > 3. Beancount's journal format has open and close keywords for modelling 2, > which we might want to support in future > > Other ideas besides your suggestion: zero/unzero ? tozero/fromzero ? > tofromzero ? endingbalanceclopen ? > > In Ledger and hledger this command uses a hard-coded "equity:..." account > name as the balancing account. Is that always what you want ? Is "equity" the > right word after all ? If someone could explain why it's the best name for > this command, I'll happily leave it alone. > > About 1, accountingtools.com <http://accountingtools.com/> says: > > Closing entries are journal entries used to empty temporary accounts at the > end of a reporting period and transfer their balances into permanent > accounts. The use of closing entries resets the temporary accounts to begin > accumulating new transactions in the next period. Otherwise, the balances in > these accounts would be incorrectly included in the totals for the following > reporting period. > > The basic sequence of closing entries is: > > • Debit all revenue accounts and credit the income summary account, > thereby clearing out the balances in the revenue accounts. > • Credit all expense accounts and debit the income summary account, > thereby clearing out the balances in all expense accounts. > • Close the income summary account to the retained earnings account. If > there was a profit in the period, then this entry is a debit to the income > summary account and a credit to the retained earnings account. If there was a > loss in the period, then this entry is a credit to the income summary account > and a debit to the retained earnings account. > The net result of these activities is to move the net profit or loss for the > period into the retained earnings account, which appears in the stockholders' > equity section of the balance sheet. > > Since the income summary account is only a transitional account, it is also > acceptable to close directly to the retained earnings account and bypass the > income summary account entirely. > > Soo.. as usual, a bit different from our language. How do these people manage > without a hierarchical account names ? :) I guess "retained earnings" is a > kind of equity ? > > Cc'ing the Ledger list for more advice. > > > >> On Jan 1, 2017, at 9:03 AM, André Fincato < <>a.fi >> <http://a.fi/>...@gmail.com <http://gmail.com/>> wrote: >> >> [I'm not an English native speaker] >> >> 1. I also think this should be a built-in feature! I did it manually myself >> today, and was good as a first-time exercise to understand the procedure, >> but having a command that does that automatically would be great. >> 2. I tried to install the add-on but did not succeed (got last in placing >> the file within the PATH variable) >> 3. `clopening` looks a bit weird IMHO, `equity` still sounds better though >> confusing to the actual actions done. Was thinking about that maybe it's >> clearer to have a command to close assets and equity balances and one to >> open them? >> >> What about `clear-out` and `clear-in` to respectively close a journal and >> opening a new one? >> >> On Monday, June 27, 2016 at 10:18:43 PM UTC+2, Simon Michael (sm) wrote: >> extra/hledger-equity.hs is similar to Ledger's "equity" command. Ours >> generates two opposite transactions that zero out and restore some account >> balances. More detail: >> hledger-equity [HLEDGEROPTS] [QUERY] >> >> Show a "closing balances" transaction that brings the balance of all >> accounts (or the matched accounts) to zero, and an opposite >> "opening balances" transaction that restores the balances from zero. >> >> The opening balances transaction is useful to carry over >> asset/liability balances if you choose to start a new journal file, >> eg at the beginning of the year. >> >> The closing balances transaction is useful to zero out balances in >> the old file, which gives you the option of reporting on both files >> at once while still seeing correct balances. >> >> Balances are calculated, and the opening transaction is dated, as of >> the report end date, which you should specify with -e or date: (and >> the closing transaction is dated one day earlier). If not specified, >> it defaults to today. >> >> If any matched account directly contains multiple commodities, the >> output may not be valid journal syntax, and will need some editing. >> >> Example: >> $ hledger equity -f 2015.journal -e 2016/1/1 assets liabilities >> >>2015.journal >> move opening balances txn to 2016.journal >> >> Open question: how to handle txns spanning a file boundary ? Eg: >> 2015/12/30 * food >> expenses:food:dining $10 >> assets:bank:checking -$10 ; date:2016/1/4 >> >> >> I think the "equity" name is unclear, and I'd like to call it something more >> descriptive. The best I've come up with is "clopening". Can you do better ? >> This one kind of exists: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=clopening >> <https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=clopening> >> >> (I don't think it matters that we deviate from Ledger here; we can still >> support "equity" as an alias.) >> >> Also I was thinking this should be a built-in command instead of an add-on. >> Maybe that's true for other things in extra/ and elsewhere, I'm not really >> sure where to draw the line. Currently it's not that easy to >> discover/install/use add-ons, so having more things built in is convenient. >> >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "hledger" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to hledger+u...@ <>googlegroups.com <http://googlegroups.com/>. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout >> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "hledger" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to hledger+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > <mailto:hledger+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ledger" group. 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