# Year-end P&L closing: how this app works

> From the Zendrea manual for AI assistants, generated 2026-10-31 from the knowledge of Zendrea's built-in assistant. All topics: https://www.zendrea.ch/llms.txt; all of them in one file: https://www.zendrea.ch/llms-full.txt. Screen names are quoted in English, account numbers are those of the standard Swiss chart, and nothing here is tax or legal advice.

This app uses a **single-step carry-forward** approach: the net income statement result is accumulated directly into **2970 Gewinnvortrag/Verlustvortrag** at fiscal year-end, bypassing account 2979.

**Consequences users should know:**

- **2979 Jahresgewinn/-verlust stays at zero** for books kept in this app from the start. There is no need to book a closing entry from 2979 to 2970 — it would have no effect.
- **2970 at year-end** contains both the prior-year carry-forward AND the current-year result combined.
- **Opening balances for a new fiscal year:** 2970 should hold all accumulated prior-year carry-forwards (profit or loss); 2979 is normally zero.
- This is a simplification of the strict Swiss OR two-step flow (income statement → 2979 → allocation to 2970 after AGM). The total equity is identical; only the intra-equity presentation differs. OR 959a requires the balance sheet to show the carry-forward and the year's result as separate equity lines (a loss as a negative item within equity, never on the assets side); the reports take the year's result from the income statement, so both models satisfy it.
- **Books migrated from a two-step system (e.g. bexio):** the imported opening balance may carry last year's result on 2979 — bexio moved it there at its closing, and it waits there for the shareholders' decision. This is correct and needs no correction. The app treats such a balance as an EARLIER year's result: the tax declaration report and the E-Bilanz export show it under profit/loss carried forward (never as the current year's profit), the opening-balances screen and the import summary point it out, and at the next year-end the app moves the remaining balance into 2970 together with the year's result. From then on the books follow the single-step model automatically.
- **Shareholders' decision (AGM: allocation to the legal reserve, dividend):** a dividend is resolved in the dividend tile on the Compensation report's Shareholders tab (the topic [people](https://www.zendrea.ch/docs/people.md)): it books the appropriation with the legal reserve allocation in the same entry, the payout net of the 35 % withholding tax and the remittance to the ESTV, and produces the shareholders' statements. Only an allocation WITHOUT a dividend is a manual entry, from whichever account holds the result — 2979 while a migrated balance still sits there, otherwise 2970 (e.g. Dr 2979 or 2970 / Cr 2950 legal reserve). The formal "2979 → 2970" transfer itself is never needed: the app performs it at year-end.
- **Account conventions:** 2970 = accumulated carry-forward (debit balance = loss, credit balance = profit). 2979 = current-year annual result per the Swiss KMU chart; in this app it only ever holds an imported balance.
- **When the carry-forward is computed:** the P&L is absorbed into 2970 automatically when a new fiscal period is **created**. It is then kept up-to-date in real time — every time a journal entry in the source period is added, modified, or deleted, the successor period's opening balance for 2970 is recalculated. There is no separate user action required and no manual closing entry to book.
- **Adding the next fiscal year:** the new year is NOT created automatically; the user adds it with "Add new fiscal period" in the header's fiscal period selector, and its opening balances fill in at that moment. Years cannot be skipped: only the year right after the last one or right before the first one can be added (2027 needs 2026 first). A missing year between two others (an empty year deleted under "Manage fiscal periods") can be added back, and its opening balances carry forward like any new year's.