GNUCASH CLOSE BOOKING YEAR

I kindly like to thank you for reading my blog. Before we continue I like to inform you that I'm not an accountant, but an experienced IT in deploying accounting software and have a junior degree in business administration.

What really happen during closing of a booking period is that you will move total expenses and income balance to your Equity balance. The result of both balance could be a profit or loss at the end of the booking period. This means that your expenses and income accounts for the new booking year will open with zero (0.00).

In Gnucash, the above is an easy task by running a running a tools from the menu Tools - Close book.
This tool will prompt you for a closing date, in most cases the last day of the year. The total Income and expenses account must be created in the Equity account tree. You may use the following:

•  Equity
• 20xx    ( the closing year)
• Expenses
• Income

Last but not least a description, like EOY 20xx  (End of Year 20xx).

Although some people or companies like to close their booking period with the above mentioned tool, but some may prefer to keep separate files for each booking year. They may reason that each closed booking year should be a read only file. They are right! But this same reason is also a disadvantage in case of corrections. For this situation you will have to correct the old year file and also the new year file.

For those who want to keep each booking year separate, here follows some steps and recommendations to help you with closing and opening new booking period in separate file in Gnucash.
Create booking period in a separate file

1. At the end of the period, make sure you book all your income, expenses, interest received, etc
2. Make sure you match your accounting with  Bank statements
• Note: Some atm withdrawals or expenses may reflect in the next periode.
3. Run all schedule task and disable them, if you have, if neccessary
4. Save and Close Gnucash 
5. Backup the gnucash file in case something goes wrong. (duplicate the gnucash file and rename including something like "BEFORE End of Period" or else)
6. Open gnucash file again
7. Run the close book year: Tools - Close book.
8. Save Gnucash
9. Create the new file year by exporting the account structure: File - Export- Export Account
• At prompt type a name and browse for the desire location to save the new file structure
10. Export the customer, vendor, employee data using one of my method discuss on this blog
• https://ppsolutionnet.blogspot.com/2017/01/export-gnucash-data-for-windows.html 
11. You may make print screens of your File - Proprieties and Edit - Preference screen
12. Generate a Balance sheet Report: Reports - Assets and Liabilities - Balance sheet
• You must include the transaction from the beginning till the end of the period
• Also modified the report level to show level 3 or 4 (recommended)
13. Close Gnucash
14. Open the new file created
15. import the customer, vendor, employee data you have exported previously
16. Amend the business properties
17. Amend Gnucash preference if necessary
18. Using your balance sheet create the open balance entry (or Balance brought forward) for each Assets and Liabilities account. Note: Invoices can not be imported in this turial, but the opening balance. Payment for invoice created in the previous booking year should be post manually.
19. Save your file

To make you gnucash file read only

1. Go to the file location
2. Right click the file and slect properties
3. In the file roperties windows, check the option Read Only.
4. Click ok to save and exit the Properties windows

For this point you are unable to save or overwrite the previos booking period file. Nevertheless you may save it to another location and has access back to write, but the one locked will remain locked

To unlock the file, just repeat above, but uncheck the Read Only option

In case of error
In case of error, do not panic! You have create the backup as suggested at step 5, right?
If not, post me your email immediately.
If you did then restore the backup you created at step 5 and start over at step 6.

If you have difficulties following my tutorial, you may contact us or comment your request .

Roam (share) your user profile with Dropbox

If you have more than one computer, you may agree with me that times to times you wish to have your desktop roam over the multiple computer you owned. Well....., you can with Dropbox.

Dropbox is a folder synchronization software over the internet.It's create a folder named Dropbox in your User profile folder (C:\Users\"login name"\Dropbox). Whatever you drop or creates in this folder with be sync over the internet and all devices you have Dropbox installed.

The following steps are tested on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Note there is a limitation for Dropbox for 2 GB of space. If you are concerned about privacy or security of your files, DO NOT FOLLOW THE FOLLOWING STEPS.
For each computer you need to follow these steps below.

From now you are on your own!!

1. Install Dropbox
2. Login or sign up to Dropbox
3. After successful login, open the Dropbox folder, if it is not open
4. Create a folder within Dropbox. 
5. Name this folder as RoamingProfile
6. Copy your current desktop folder (I assume the location is C:\Users\"login name"\Desktop) to the  RoamingProfile folder (in this tutorial C:\Users\"login name"\Dropbox\RoamingProfile) 
7. If you still did not have exceed the limit of Dropbox, you may copy Documents to the RoamingProfile like desktop
8. If you still did not have exceed the limit of Dropbox, you may do the same for music
9. If you still did not have exceed the limit of Dropbox, you may do the same for pictures 
10. If you still did not have exceed the limit of Dropbox, you may do the same for videos
11. Search and open regedit.exe from the start menu.
12. Browse to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders and make e backup (VERY IMPORTANT)
• Right click
• select export
• When prompt select the location and type a name ShellFolders for the backup reg file.
13. Modify the string value for Desktop to C:\Users\"login name"\Dropbox\RoamingProfile\Desktop
14. If you have copied the Documents in step 7, modify the string value for Personal to C:\Users\"login name"\Dropbox\RoamingProfile\Documents
15. If you have copied the Music in step 8, modify the string value for My Music to C:\Users\"login name"\Dropbox\RoamingProfile\Music
16. If you have copied the Pictures in step 9, modify the string value for My Pictures to C:\Users\"login name"\Dropbox\RoamingProfile\Pictures 
17. If you have copied the Video  in step 10, modify the string value for My video to C:\Users\"login name"\Dropbox\RoamingProfile\Videos
18. Browse to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders and make e backup by exporting this key and it subkeys and value
• Right click
• select export
• When prompt select the location and type a name UserShellFolders for the backup reg file.
19. Repeat step 13 to 17 for the User Shell Folder key
20. Now restart  your computer 
21. If something when wrong you will need to double click the reg files you create at step 12 and 18 and restart your computer
22. For computer space you may delete the content of the previous profile directory (C:\Users\"login name") for desktop, documents, music, pictures, videos. Before delete make sure that the folder was copied to roaming profile. If not, DO NOT DELETE IT.
23. Go to next machine and repeat step one to 22.

I hope you will enjoy your roaming profile over the internet