Just to add to it, > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retained_earnings: The retained earnings > of a corporation is the accumulated net income of the corporation that > is retained by the corporation at a particular point of time, such as at > the end of the reporting period. ... > > https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/retained-earnings: > the part of a company’s profit in a particular period that it decides to > keep, rather than paying it to shareholders as a dividend
And at some point if dividends are paid to shareholders, the retained earning should account for that as well. Many at time, small businesses pay dividends as a method of steady income to shareholders. They don't divide the entire profit though. Hence the business will still have retained earnings after dividends. - Regards, Justin Mathew mjus...@protonmail.com Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Wednesday, April 17, 2019 8:37 PM, Frank H. Ellenberger <frank.h.ellenber...@gmail.com> wrote: > John, > > the issue is not about reports or accounts, but the term "retained > earnings". While for the "normal" private user (and our original > programmers) it may be seen as synonym for "net income", for business > users it is more specific: The amount of the net income, which is for > several reasons (juristic, ...) transferred to the next period. > > Example: There is a pending discussion with a client about the quality > of our sold product. He claims his money back. > > IMHO we should rename, what currently is called "retained earnings" in > GnuCash to "net income". I have no specific opinion about the account > names in our english and norsk templates . > > My estimation is based on > https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/retained earnings > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retained_earnings: The retained earnings > of a corporation is the accumulated net income of the corporation that > is retained by the corporation at a particular point of time, such as at > the end of the reporting period. ... > > https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/retained-earnings: > the part of a company’s profit in a particular period that it decides to > keep, rather than paying it to shareholders as a dividend > > Regards > Frank > > Am 17.04.19 um 01:24 schrieb John Ralls: > > > Justin, > > No, just you. This is real simple: GnuCash provides two ways to account for > > reporting retained earnings, including dividends. I'm not asking you to do > > anything, I'm telling you how GnuCash works. Either you use one of those > > two ways or you use a different accounting program. > > Regards, > > John Ralls _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
