Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

On Thu, 22 Feb 2018 16:43:49 -0500 Stan Brown wrote: > Thanks -- this makes sense. Seems I want to set my accounting period > to the (calendar) year, because I do want to reset income, and > expenses to zero at the end of each year. I've seen the relative-type > dates

Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

> > > -- Forwarded message -- > From: Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepf...@dialup4less.com> > To: gnucash-user@gnucash.org > Cc: > Bcc: > Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 17:35:43 -0500 > Subject: Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing b

Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

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

Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

2018-02-22 15:01, Adrien Monteleone wrote: > ... > This comes in handy when you are entering historical data and need to run > several reports. By defining the period in Preferences, you get this as the > default date range for reports like the Income Statement, otherwise, you’d > have to set

Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

Dan, Yes, I know of these practices. They are not always necessary depending on the use case or the software. Gnucash is such an example. The reports in Gnucash roll Income and Expenses into Equity automatically, without closing books. While other software does retain the end of period data

Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

On 2018-02-22 14:15, Derek Atkins wrote: > You must be reading old manuals. I read what's on line, and what installed with 2.6.19. > Closing the books just zeros out the Income and Expense accounts, rolling > them up into Equity. The reports can do this on their own, so really the > only

Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

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

Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

> On Feb 22, 2018, at 1:11 PM, Stan Brown wrote: > > New user here. I understand double-entry accounting pretty well, but I'm > struggling to adapt that knowledge to GnuCash's take on double-entry > accounting. > > Why do we specify an accounting period? How is it

Re: Purpose of Accounting Period? Benefit to closing books?

Hi, You must be reading old manuals. Closing the books just zeros out the Income and Expense accounts, rolling them up into Equity. The reports can do this on their own, so really the only benefit is that your Income and Expense accounts will return to $0 instead of showing you a grand total