Ok, that JE in itself will cause a conflict with the opening “Retained Earnings” balance that you have entered. Let say your total Retained Earnings as at Nov 30 was 6,000, which you have entered as the Dec 01 opening balance. Now lets say that the Retained Earnings just for the year 2016 was 2,000. If you attempt to put in the 2016 P&L figures via a JE, then that 2,000 is going to be duplicated as it is already apart of the 6,000. Furthermore, you can’t change the opening balance to 4,000 as then the opening balances wont balance.
The easiest solution for you would be to go to Settings - Budgets and enter your 2106 figures
as a 2017 Budget so you can have the comparisons, without the data conflict.