GnuCash frustrations

[Dale Alspach]

>3) I began entering data as of 1 Jan.  Trying to reconcile my bank 
>statement.  Can't because some of the transactions occurred in 2002.  How 
>do you completely reconcile in this situation?

The normal way to do this is to reconcile in two parts. The trouble is that
you are not going to be able to just look at the statement. You have an
extra reconciliation point at the change over that you must determine.
In setting up your
checkbook as of Jan 1 you needed to bring in an opening balance  (equity).
If all of your checks written before Jan. 1 cleared, your account should
reconcile by clearing the opening balance transaction.
If not then you may want to consider removing the uncleared transaction
amounts from your opening balance, and enter the uncleared transactions as
separate transactions from opening balance (equity). Next month they will be
available to clear as they are processed by the bank.

I would like to float something to the developers about the roll over. I
understand that there is something in CVS to do this, but (perhaps too
late) I would like to outline a way to roll over to a new financial year
that would work well for me and perhaps others.

Rollover Scenario:

I would like to go along extending my entries past the end of the financial
year for a few weeks so that tax, credit card and bank statements covering the
end of the previous year can be used to catch inaccuracies or unknowns for
the previous year. At some point, say February 1, I decide that it is time
close the books on last year and go to the books for the new year.
I tell gnucash 

(1) which accounts to start at 0 on January 1 with no
transactions prior to January 1; Generally this would be all income and
expense accounts. 
(2) which accounts to start at the ending balance Dec. 31 with no
transactions prior to January 1; liabilities and assets with a fairly fixed
behavior, e.g., mortgage, car loan, fixed assets, cash, equity.
(3) which accounts to start at the ending balance Dec. 31 with only
unreconciled transactions prior to Jan. 1; bank and credit card accounts
(4) which accounts to preserve all transactions, e.g., a stock or mutual
fund transaction account so that basis information would be available.

For each account which requires that transactions from before Jan 1 be
carried over, I would designate an account of type equity which would
become the other account in each such transaction.
I would also designate this or another equity account 
for the opening balance transaction.

In general there could be a default choice of accounts by type for each of
the above so that setup would actually mean adjusting the default setup.

After everything is setup, I launch the rollover.
Gnucash does the following things:

1. The account tree is copied into the new books with the same account IDs.
2. All transactions with date Jan 1 and after are copied over to the new
books.
3. For each transaction from before Jan. 1 that must be transferred gnucash
changes the account ID of the other account to the designated equity
account and then copies it into the new books. 
4. Gnucash sets the opening (Jan 1) balance of each account
using either the "opening balance" equity account or the account I have
designated as the other account. Gnucash takes into consideration any
transactions from before Jan. 1 that were entered so that the balance in
the account on January 1 is the ending balance from Dec 31 in all asset and
liability accounts. This could also include the use of a retained
earnings account so that net income from the prior year is recorded.
5. Optionally all transactions Jan 1 and after could be deleted from the
previous year books.
6. Gnucash could display a horizontal line dividing previous year
transactions from current year transactions similar to that currently used 
between current and future transactions.
7. Gnucash might also carry over some summary information from the 
prior year for report purposes, e.g., monthly income and expense 
totals.

Unless I have overlooked something this should preserve the balance sheet
and the entries needed so that unreconciled transactions from the previous
year could be reconciled in the current year. By allowing a delay in going
to the new books cross year reconciliation can be nearly eliminated. Also
transaction history which may be important for tax purposes can be
preserved as needed. Another gain would be that gnucash would not lose as
much of its "memory" because a month of tranactions is carried over and it
would know what the last paycheck deposit or mortgage payment split was.

Dale Alspach