GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 638955
"Close Books" needs documentation
Last modified: 2018-06-29 22:51:11 UTC
What I want: ee a report: "Income piechart" with start date: 2010-Jan-01, end date: 2011-Dec-01, with all income accounts selected. What I have in a data: I have a few entries in each account with a date < 2010-Dec-31, 2 entries in one income account with a date 2011-Jan-04. I also use a tool "close book" just after a 2010-Jan-01. What I get: I see only entries from current year, regardless of selected data range. It cause a report useless. My observation: Every pie report is affected, and when user use a tool "close book", all reports with start date before closing book date are corrupted.
Created attachment 177796 [details] Database with short example of situation, when this bug shows
Created attachment 177797 [details] Settings for report and (in a background) what I get
Maybe it will be useful: Software compiled from source downloaded from gnucash webpage. MD5SUM: 3d396acb05a062adfc85bc9c4f8f0b08 gnucash-2.4.0.tar.bz2 Operating system: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64bit
As the knowledge of the polish language of most developers is really very limited, can you please translate the options, special the data settings?
Created attachment 177892 [details] English version of test database Created with gnucash started from command: "LANG=en_GB LANGUAGE=en_GB gnucash"
Created attachment 177893 [details] Settings for report and (in a background) what I get (English version)
(...)can you please translate the options, special the data settings(..)? I created english version of this case, I hope that this is what you need. If not, please send me an info.
Ok, I understand. If you open the corresponding bar chart, you see the income of the previous year is neutralized by the closing book transaction and you get only the income of the current year. By closing the book the earnings of the last year were transfered to equity:opening balance. BTW. the more adequate solution would be to have also an account equity:retained earnings or similar. Because I can not find something like "close books" in the documentation, I rename the bug and assign it to the documentation team. Thanks for your work.
Eventually later we should implement a check of the reports selected time range options against the last close book transaction and pop up a warning. So feel free to reassign it to reports, if the documentation is done.
The original bug report is about something different, but the current bug summary fits the following report: In the "Close Book" window, when you click the "Help" button, the "Setting Preferences" page opens and it doesn't tell you anything about closing the books.
Oh and there is more information in this thread: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Year-end-procedure-td1431141.html
I think I can do this. It should be two patches: one to gnucash-docs to add a section on closing books, and another to gnucash to make the Close Book dialog box's Help button open that section. Thanks everyone for working on this bug. I'll post the patches in a couple of days....
Created attachment 233207 [details] [review] Add documentation for book closing A draft of the documentation for closing the books.
Created attachment 233327 [details] [review] Add documentation for book closing
Created attachment 233328 [details] [review] Get GnuCash Close Book dialog box Help button to open book closing documentation
Yawar-- Generally, this looks good. I would like to suggest a number of edits for clarity. I include my version of your text below, because I am not so good with the attachment/patch stuff. I copied your attachment and then inserted my changes directly. David + <sect1 id="tool-close-book"><title>Close Book</title> + <para>The <guilabel>Close Book</guilabel> dialog box is used for + “closing the books,” an accounting process that resets + the balances of the income and expense accounts. In this process, + income account balances are transferred into an income equity account, + while expense account balances are transferred into an expense equity + account. You are given the option to specify these accounts, which may + be the same. You also specify the date for the closing transfer.</para> + + <sect2 id="tool-close-book-anatomy"><title>Dialog Box + Details</title> + <para>The dialog box has the following parts:</para> + + <itemizedlist> + <listitem> + <para><guilabel>Closing Date</guilabel> Specify the date for the + closing transfer. You can type in a date or choose one from the + drop-down.</para> + </listitem> + + <listitem> + <para><guilabel>Income Total</guilabel> Specify the account + into which the total balance of all income accounts will be + transferred. You can create a new account to receive the transfer + using the <guibutton>New</guibutton> button.</para> + </listitem> + + <listitem> + <para><guilabel>Expense Total</guilabel> Specify the account + into which the total balance of all expense accounts will be + transferred. You can create a new account to receive the transfer + using the <guibutton>New</guibutton> button.</para> + </listitem> + + <listitem> + <para><guilabel>Description</guilabel> Specify the description + that will be entered in the closing entry.</para> + </listitem> + + </itemizedlist> + </sect2> + + <sect2 id="tool-close-book-workings"><title>How It Works</title> + <para><application>&app;</application> closes books by + creating one transaction per currency for income accounts, + and one transaction per currency for expense accounts. The + transactions all use the date selected by the user, and + each transaction may contain any number of splits. Each split + moves the balance out of one income or expense account. The + last split in each closing transaction moves the total + offsetting debit/credit balance into the specified equity + account.</para> + + <para>Each transaction will use the description provided by the user + in the <guilabel>Description</guilabel> entry.</para> + + <para>The fact that <application>&app;</application> just + uses transactions to close the books makes it very simple to + undo a book closing: just delete the closing transactions.</para> + </sect2> + + <sect2 id="tool-close-book-not"><title>What It Doesn’t + Do</title> + <para>The book closing tool does not delete any accounts or + transactions; create any new files; or hide any accounts.</para> + </sect2> + + <sect2 id="tool-close-book-need"><title>Necessity</title> + <para>Note that closing the books in <application>&app; + </application> is unnecessary. You do not need to zero out + your income and expense accounts at the end of each financial + period. <application>&app;</application>’s built-in + reports automatically handle concepts like retained earnings + between two different financial periods.</para> + + <para>In fact, closing the books reduces the usefulness of + the standard reports because the reports don’t + currently understand closing transactions. So from their + point of view it simply looks like the net income or expense + in each account for a given period was simply zero.</para> + </sect2> + + <sect2 id="tool-close-book-conclusion"><title>Conclusion</title> + <para>If you close your books, be prepared to see inaccuracies + in the standard reports. On the other hand, you will see + current-period income and expense figures in the chart of + accounts.</para> + </sect2> + </sect1> </chapter> -- 1.7.9.5
Yawar, are you OK with David's edits? You want this backported to 2.4, right?
David, (In reply to comment #16) > Yawar-- > > Generally, this looks good. I would like to suggest a number of edits for > clarity. I include my version of your text below, because I am not so good with > the attachment/patch stuff. I copied your attachment and then inserted my > changes directly. Thanks for the edits. I incorporated them and then made what I think are a few minor tweaks to satisfy my pedantry about labels and such things :-) John, (In reply to comment #17) > [...] > You want this backported to 2.4, right? Yes, thank you for reminding me. I'm uploading the new version of the gnucash-docs patch here for David's and my own edits. Also attaching another gnucash repo patch against the 2.4.9 tag (the patch based on trunk didn't apply cleanly so I made another one based on 2.4.9). Thanks, Yawar
Created attachment 233406 [details] [review] This is a backport to be applied to gnucash 2.4.9
Created attachment 233407 [details] [review] To be applied to gnucash-docs trunk Should apply cleanly to gnucash-docs 2.4.2
(In reply to comment #19) > Created an attachment (id=233406) [details] [review] > This is a backport to be applied to gnucash 2.4.9 Oops. Just saw that the latest gnucash tag is 2.4.11. But the patch applied cleanly to that as well.
All applied. Yawar, don't think in terms of applying to tags. It effectively creates a new branch, usually in a way you don't want. When you're working on something -- code, docs, even the website -- you should always have the target branch HEAD checked out (e.g., git checkout 2.4).
John, thanks. I did debate a little about applying to branches/tags but decided to apply to the latest commit I could find in the 2.4 series. Anyway. All my local branches are throwaways. Thanks for your help. Derek's registered my new SSH key now so I should be able to do commits from now on. Will try tomorrow and know for sure.
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