puzzling over the balance sheet.

[Paul Pantages]

hi gnucashers,

Since I finally have 1.6.6-7 going on RH8, I went back to a problem that
has nagged me for some time.

My balance sheet does not add up. I.e., A != L+E

I tried to find out what the problem was by rolling the report back (in
time) until I found the date where the first discrepancy occurred. This
was 12/30/95, where an error of a few hundred dollars appears. I thought
it would be easy to track down by just looking at all transactions on
12/29 and 12/30, but all the transactions look ok (they are balanced).I
am using the transaction report to find these.

I read some time ago (in the list, I think) not to use "nearest in time"
for prices, so I am using weighted average for the price source.

I do have mutual fund purchases (in 401K) for 12/30, but similar
transactions were also made regularly, prior to 12/30, without causing
any problems. I do not have prices in the price editor for 12/30 that
might conflict with the actual purchase price. (In fact I have deleted
the securities from the list as I no longer own these funds).

What I find odd is: I had at one point installed 1.7.6-1 (I subsequently
re-installed RH8 so I am now at 1.6.6.7) and I poked around  at the
balance sheet a bit. I found that the 12/30/1995 balance sheet was OK,
but errors still appeared at later dates.

The fact that the two versions of GC give different reports for the same
data makes me think it may not be a data error after all. 

I have no real clue on this one. :(. Has anyone seen & fixed similar
problems with the balance sheet report? 

I am going to try an re-introduce the deleted securities & fetch prices
for them, but I am not confident this will help.

PdP