ledgersmb
Canadian Chart of Accounts has no "Retained Earnings"
Version
1.12.9
What browsers are you seeing the problem on?
This problem isn't browser related
What happened?
I'm trying to set up my initial book, but given that I have no outstanding AR/AP, I would expect my initial bank balance to equal my retained earnings. However, there is no Retained Earnings account, and the only Equity account is Common shares under SHARE CAPITAL. It would be wrong to create a Retained Earnings account under SHARE CAPITAL.
I think I'll just rename SHARE CAPITAL to EQUITY, but Retained Earnings should definitely be in the default COA.
What should have happened?
There should always be a Retained Earnings account.
How did you load the Chart of Accounts?
What steps did you take to get a COA without a Retained Earnings account?
Without more info we cannot look into this.
Still need more information.
When I create a new company and select Canada, I get the following options. None of which are "Canadian English".
Country = "Canada" and two COAs where one has a prefix of "English" and the other "French-Quebec" seems pretty straightforward to me.
In any case, now that I've found the actual English_General.xml file, it's clear that there is no account for Retained Earnings (even though retained earnings are referenced three times under the <gifi-list> tag
The GIFI codes in <gifi-list> are simply those provided by the Canadian government, transformed into a list to be imported into LedgerSMB: It's supposed to be a complete list of codes so anyone who wants to create a new account can classify that account into any of the issued GIFI classes. However, that doesn't mean each chart of accounts covers the full set of GIFI codes.
Given that the CoA is a template to be read into new companies, after which new accounts can be added, how bad is it really that there isn't a predefined Retained Earnings account?
It's not "bad"—I created one. It's just wrong from an accounting standpoint. "Retained earnings" are standard, and should be in the standard template. I only referenced GIFI because they think Retained Earnings are significant enough to be in the GIFI table—three times!