Reconcilling accounts (fwd)

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Derek Atkins wrote:

> I'm fairly sure there are some docs in the standard gnucash docs.  But the
> reconcile process is pretty straightforward.  You start from a known
> balance, and then mark off each transaction that matches the transactions
> on your paper statement.  At the end you should have a one-to-one mapping
> and the ending balance should match.

Derek,

   This is what I assumed. However, ...

> So, does the opening balance for the month match your statement?  If not,
> then go back in time until it does.  If the opening balance matches then
> make sure all your transactions match.

    ... I cannot enter an opening balance in the dialog box.

   My old system crashed hard about a month ago. I replaced the 7-year-old
hardware and installed Slackware-10.0 instead of the Red Hat-7.3 I had been
using. Then I installed the latest gnucash, 1.8.9, and entered all
transactions since the first of the year. I entered the opening balance for
the year as equity (retained, I suppose one could claim). Then I entered all
transactions.

   When I finished, I changed the "F" column from 'n' to 'c' for all cleared
transactions. Then I tried to reconcile the account from Actions ->
Reconcile. The reconcile information dialog box comes up with data entry
widgets for statement date and closing balance. The opening balence field in
the middle is not available for modification and reads $0.00. When I click
"OK" I see cleared amount that is much lower than the dollar amount of the
debits and credits actually cleared and a negative difference between
reconcilied balance and statement balance. Again, the opening balance is
shown as $0.00.

   I did not expect this result so I thought I better read the docs to
discover what I did wrong.

Thanks,

Rich