Where does retained earnings come from?

It's computed automatically from all income and expenses posted since the book was created through the date you asked for — you don't need to run a separate year-end close for it to be accurate.

What does it mean if the balanced flag is false?

It means assets don't equal liabilities plus equity, which shouldn't happen in a healthy double-entry ledger — treat it as a structural problem worth reporting, the same way you would an unbalanced trial balance.

balance_sheetRead-only

See what you own, what you owe, and what's left as of a date

You need to know where things actually stand right now — not what came in and went out this month, but the full picture of what the business owns and owes.

Where a profit and loss shows activity over a stretch of time, a balance sheet is a snapshot as of one specific date: everything you own (assets), everything you owe (liabilities), and what's left over for the owner (equity). BalanceMCP computes retained earnings automatically as part of equity, rolling up all income and expenses from the beginning of the book through that date — you don't have to close out a year manually for the number to be accurate as of today.

A healthy balance sheet balances: assets equal liabilities plus equity, always, by construction. That equality is baked into double-entry bookkeeping the same way a trial balance's debit and credit totals are — it's the same underlying guarantee, just presented in the standard financial-statement layout instead of a raw account list.

Liability sign convention deserves a callout: liabilities read as positive numbers when money is owed. A credit card with a balance shows up as a positive liability here, and it reads exactly the same way on cash_position's row for that account — the two reports agree. Where cash_position differs is its grand total, which nets card debt against cash rather than just adding the two together.

What you would actually say"What does the balance sheet look like as of the end of last quarter?"

What this does not do

Retained earnings is computed from all posted activity since the book began — it reflects only what has actually been posted, not anything still unposted in the inbox.
Reads as of a single date, not a range — pull it twice at different dates if you want to see how the position changed over time.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	What it is
`bookId`	`uuid`	Required	—
`asOf`	`string`	Required	—

Generated from the tool definition, so it cannot describe arguments the tool does not accept. Unrecognised arguments are rejected rather than ignored.

Common questions

Where does retained earnings come from?: It's computed automatically from all income and expenses posted since the book was created through the date you asked for — you don't need to run a separate year-end close for it to be accurate.
What does it mean if the balanced flag is false?: It means assets don't equal liabilities plus equity, which shouldn't happen in a healthy double-entry ledger — treat it as a structural problem worth reporting, the same way you would an unbalanced trial balance.