I hope you can follow this as I am not an accountant. I have QB Pro 2008.

My fiscal year ends 3/31. When I started using Quickbooks, I entered data back to the beginning of this past fiscal year, 4/1/07. Before I started, I made a Journal Entry for 3/31/07 giving the opening balance of my retained earnings. All has been fine until now. On my balance sheet for 4/30/08, now I have two entries for retained earnings: one is the original entry I made on 3/31/07, and the other is a retained earnings account showing my retained earnings as of 3/31/08. I thought Quickbooks would automatically transfer the net income into the retained earnings account; however, it hasn't. Do I have to live with two retained earnings accounts?

I was told by someone only slightly familiar with QB that thereason I now have two retained earnings accounts is that I did not "close" the books at the end of the fiscal year. I chose not to close the books because I didn't want to zero out my income/expense accounts as there
will be occasions that I will want to make comparative reports between last fiscal year and this fiscal year.

So...will I just have to live with two retained earnings account in the future? I thought perhaps I could make a one-time manual entry to retained earnings, but I certainly dont want to have to make manual entries every month.

I will appreciate any help here.

Thanks..

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Conrad Poth