Sorry, but this isn't really a gnucash question.
By which I mean if you knew how to do this (by the standards of your
jurisdiction) were the books being kept the old fashioned way, pen and
ink on paper, you would have little difficulty doing it with the books
being kept using gnucash. The "retained earnings" (or "losses" shown by
gnucash in the Balance sheet are for a VIRTUAL account representing the
UNCLOSED income and expense accounts.
It looks like you would be wanting to use explicit accounts (in equity)
which you can do by closing the books the old fashioned way (ignore the
gnucash "close the books" tool). Essentially your question is just about
accounting workflow, but this point (that you probably want to do these
quarterly "close the books" operations not using the tool.
Michael D Novack
On 10/21/2023 10:44 PM, Quinn Wood wrote:
How do I close my books at the end of a period and have the Equity
Statement Report correctly show capital investments and withdrawals without
classifying retained earnings as either? Retained earnings are neither.
I've every combination of workflows I can think of.
* closing Q3 books into a separate top-level Income Summary account then
transferring (in Q4) retained earnings and any declared dividends into
Retained Earnings (an equity account) and Dividends Payable (a liability
account)
* closing Q3 books directly into Retained Earnings and later (in Q4)
transferring declared dividends into Dividends Payable
* using closing and dividend transaction descriptions that match the
closing entries pattern in the Equity Statement report, that do not, or any
combination of the two
* including and excluding the Income Summary and/or Retained Earnings
accounts in the Equity Statement report
* closing Q4 books the same way as I closed Q3
My Q4 report is either full of incorrectly-interpreted numbers it's pulling
from the Q4 closing entries (if I don't exclude them) or it's just missing
data (if I exclude a transaction that includes transfers to retained
earnings or dividends payable.)
I can't find a way to do this that works. What is this workflow supposed to
look like?
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