On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 2:52 PM, Rick F <[email protected]> wrote:

> Well, now that I'm dealing with a real accountant to get my taxes done, I
> have to produce these accounting reports.  How to produce these reports has
> been covered already on this list, but to summarize (assuming you have the
> standard five accounting categories):
>
> Profit and Loss: ledger bal '/^Revenues|^Expenses/'
> Balance sheet: ledger bal '!/^Revenues|^Expenses/'
>
> Here's where having a real accountant comes in.  The above produces a
> balance sheet that doesn't balance.  He expects there to be an
> Equity:Retained Earnings account where this year's profits end up in order
> to make the whole thing balance.  I tried adding an entry:
>
> 12/31  Year End
>     Revenues =$0
>     Expenses =$0
>     Equity:Retained Earnings
>
> But that fails if Revenues and Expenses have subcategories, and frankly
> they're not useful if they don't.  Even if I get rid of subcategories just
> to force this, it balances the balance sheet, but it also balances the P&L,
> making it look like I made no money last year.
>
> How do others get this to work?
>

In the Beancount implementation, what I call "previous earnings" (the sum
total of all income and expense accounts from the beginning of time to the
START of the reporting period) are moved from income/expense accounts by
automatically-created transactions to an Equity:Earnings:Previous account,
and retained earnings / net income (the sum total of all income and expense
accounts from the start of the reporting period to the end of the reporting
period) are moved - for the balance sheet only - by automatically-created
transactions to an Equity:Earnings:Current account.

For currency conversions, in order to ensure a 0 balance, there are
Equity:Conversions:Previous and Equity:Conversions:Currenty accounts which
reestablish per-currency balances.

You can click on trial balance  - the sum of all accounts in the ledger -
and the sum is 0.

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