close, equity\
Prints a "closing balances" transaction and an "opening balances" transaction
that bring account balances to and from zero, respectively.
These can be added to your journal file(s), eg to bring
asset/liability balances forward into a new journal file, or to
close out revenues/expenses to retained earnings at the end of a period.

_FLAGS

You can print just one of these transactions by using the `--close` or `--open` flag.
You can customise their descriptions with the `--close-desc` and `--open-desc` options.

One amountless posting to "equity:opening/closing balances" is added
to balance the transactions, by default.
You can customise this account name with `--close-acct` and `--open-acct`;
if you specify only one of these, it will be used for both.

With `--x/--explicit`, the equity posting's amount will be shown.
And if it involves multiple commodities, a posting for each commodity 
will be shown, as with the print command.

With `--interleaved`, the equity postings are shown next to the
postings they balance, which makes troubleshooting easier.

By default, transaction prices in the journal are ignored when
generating the closing/opening transactions.
With `--show-costs`, this cost information is preserved
(`balance -B` reports will be unchanged after the transition).
Separate postings are generated for each cost in each commodity.
Note this can generate very large journal entries, if you have many
foreign currency or investment transactions.

### close usage

If you split your journal files by time (eg yearly), you will
typically run this command at the end of the year, and save the
closing transaction as last entry of the old file, and the opening
transaction as the first entry of the new file.
This makes the files self contained, so that correct balances are
reported no matter which of them are loaded. Ie, if you load just one
file, the balances are initialised correctly; or if you load several
files, the redundant closing/opening transactions cancel each other
out. (They will show up in print or register reports; you can exclude
them with a query like `not:desc:'(opening|closing) balances'`.)

If you're running a business, you might also use this command to
"close the books" at the end of an accounting period, transferring
income statement account balances to retained earnings. (You may want
to change the equity account name to something like 
"equity:retained earnings".)

By default, the closing transaction is dated yesterday, the balances 
are calculated as of end of yesterday, and the opening transaction is dated today.
To close on some other date, use: `hledger close -e OPENINGDATE`.
Eg, to close/open on the 2018/2019 boundary, use `-e 2019`.
You can also use -p or `date:PERIOD` (any starting date is ignored).

Both transactions will include balance assertions for the
closed/reopened accounts.  You probably shouldn't use status or
realness filters (like -C or -R or `status:`) with this command, or
the generated balance assertions will depend on these flags.
Likewise, if you run this command with --auto, the balance assertions
will probably always require --auto.

Examples:

Carrying asset/liability balances into a new file for 2019:

```shell
$ hledger close -f 2018.journal -e 2019 assets liabilities --open
    # (copy/paste the output to the start of your 2019 journal file)
$ hledger close -f 2018.journal -e 2019 assets liabilities --close
    # (copy/paste the output to the end of your 2018 journal file)
```

Now:

```shell
$ hledger bs -f 2019.journal                   # one file - balances are correct
$ hledger bs -f 2018.journal -f 2019.journal   # two files - balances still correct
$ hledger bs -f 2018.journal not:desc:closing  # to see year-end balances, must exclude closing txn
```

Transactions spanning the closing date can complicate matters, breaking balance assertions:

```journal
2018/12/30 a purchase made in 2018, clearing the following year
    expenses:food          5
    assets:bank:checking  -5  ; [2019/1/2]
```

Here's one way to resolve that:

```journal
; in 2018.journal:
2018/12/30 a purchase made in 2018, clearing the following year
    expenses:food          5
    liabilities:pending

; in 2019.journal:
2019/1/2 clearance of last year's pending transactions
    liabilities:pending    5 = 0
    assets:checking
```
