Fiscal Year Beginning Balances - A good idea?

1

To get the account balances, ERPNext sums up all the ledger amounts from the beginning of time.

Changes in previous Fiscal Years affects the amounts for the current Fiscal Year. (This was mentioned in the discussion of backdated entries.)

Providing each Fiscal Year with Beginning Balances at the start of the year , based on the year-end balance of the previous Fiscal Year will ensure that the current Fiscal Year’s balances will not be affected by any changes outside that Fiscal Year.

Advantages of Beginning Balances

  1. Fiscal Year’s balances will not be affected by possible changes in previous Fiscal Years. (Beginning Balance for the current fiscal year may be regenerated if necessary to reflect changes in the previous fiscal year accounts).

  2. Allows deletion of previous fiscal years’ data without affecting the present fiscal year. (Do you really want to recalculate ledger amounts from 20 years back to get the current amount? - if your ERPNext gets to be 20 years old?)

Is a good idea? Please comment.

2

I thought this was the way ERPNext currently closing the Fiscal Year. By storing the values to an end balance, which is brought to the next year FY as opening balance. Like closing the P&L and bring it to the BS.

If not, I think this is a great idea and ERPNext should have it.

3

Period closing means closing (reversing to zero up) the Income and Expense Accounts to an Equity Account (Retained Earnings) which reflects the increase in Equity because of business operations. There is no calculation for the Fiscal year’s Beginning Balance.
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4

it is a good idea, SAP has such periodic summary table for each accounts(ledger), it is needed to do fiscal year carry forward before new transaction in the new fiscal year. also it is only possible to adjust the previous fiscal year transaction figures in special period such as period 13, period 14.