KMyMoney: Version 5.1.3-eef04f1
There are time when we would like to select a cutoff date, be it on a yearly or decade basis, and start a new file. The feature would allow the user to select the date, and then the application should create a new KMY file with all the same account structures, and transactions starting from the selected date.
A user can do this manually but they would have to export the account templates and then go back into the file to update the account starting balance. Much nicer if KMY can do it itself.
This may be helpful for people looking to close their financial books in an effort to remove many âclosedâ accounts that are no longer needed. It may also be useful just to close the books on a yearly basis to ensure no accidental changes to the yearâs past data. Of course, this will also mean that the past data will not be available for the reports and the manual work required could be a lot if you have many accounts that remain open.
Another way to approach something like this is to âlockâ the data from previous years(based on a date a user selects). This way it would avoid the accidental addition of transaction to an already âclosedâ section of a ledger. I am aware that you can close an account, perhaps that is a good temporary fix. âBank Account Aâ could have multiple Accounts, one per year. âBank Account A 2024â, âBank Account A 2023â, âBank Account 2022â - then just close the accounts as the year ends. This could get messy though.
In short the request is for an automate way to move data from one KMY file to another, leaving behind the closed accounts. I figure there may be reasons why we canât do this and just putting this out here to start discussion in case anyone else thinks they could use this.
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Possibly have the ability to define periods as start date/end dates ? Then transactions line up within dates for reporting or other purposes. Budgetting ?
The strict calendar date currently suits most people, but some degree of flexibility would be a bonus.
This has been discussed many times. There are two separate issues here - one is reporting and fiscal year, which are normally based on calendar year, but in many cases can be tied to fiscal year.
Actually purging or archiving all data earlier that some specified date is a whole different issue. You can easily set KMyMoney to not show any transactions earlier than a specified date, in case the issue is just an overwhelming display. However, actually removing transactions would require setting the opening transaction of each account to be the previous opening balance plus the amount of all transactions being removed. As one example of why this may not be a good idea, it would mess up all growth related calculations for investment accounts. I suppose one possibility would be âcollapsingâ all transacions from the previous year (assuming that is the period being dealt with) with a smaller number - but you would need one for each Category to keep the Category balances correct. In Investment accounts, some collapsing might be possible, but then you could only do rate of return type calculations for whole years.
One point is that some people have requested this to improve the performance as data accumulates, but several users have stated performance remains good, even with hundreds/thousands of accounts/transactions/splits.
In terms of preventing accidental/unintended changes to older data, there is a wishlist to give the user extra warning if they try to change any reconciled transaction. It also takes some effort to change any transaction in a closed account.
I meant something a bit different than what I think you are describing. Many accounting programs have the concept of âclosing the booksâ for a given period. You can close the books on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis, and of course on a yearly basis. That would be cool for sure to have in kMyMoney! 
However, I was just thinking of a use case where I am wanting to start a new book combining my information with my wifeâs. I have almost 10 years of data in my file. I wish there was a way to select a date and have the program create closing entries and start a new book with the closing amounts transferred over. I am not sure how this would work with investment accounts. I have not thought that through. Essentially, I want to track our income/expenses/budgets⌠all of our financial information together but not have to reload years of data. (I want to go back 2 years at most).
So far, performance is well for me with almost 10 years of data.
I would call that merging two data files. It shouldnât be all that difficult, but I can imagine a number of issues. One approach would be for KMM to âimportâ another KMM data file. You would have to merge the payees so you donât get duplicates, and likewise for the categories. Then you need to be sure you donât have any accounts in both files. If you do, you would want to be sure they were essentially identical in content, so you could then ignore either one of the two.