Reconcile initial balance error

[Steve Kelem]

When I try to reconcile my brokerage account for the first time, I get
an error with the starting balance.
GC thinks that I have a starting balance of around $500,000!
My hierarchy looks like the following:

Assets
  Investments
    Brokerage Account
      Primo Investments
        Funds
          Global Slush Fund
        Stocks
          MegaCorp

The starting dates for these transactions is 1999-3-1, and I'm trying to
get GnuCash to reconcile all this old data that I imported from Quicken.

I have reconciled the leaf-level accounts for March 1999.
When I try to reconcile the parent, Primo Investments, GnuCash shows a
starting balance of $500,000 for this account, even though no
transactions are before March 1999 in any of the accounts under Primo
Investments.

After this problem, I added an Opening Balance transfer of 0 shares from
Equity:Opening Balances to every account from Primo on down to all the
leaf accounts under it.
I have run the Check & Repair command, and I still get the wrong
Starting Balance.

Can anyone help me out?

Thanks,
Steve

kendall green said the following on 12/07/2006 06:33 AM:
> More info as requested.  I started using gnucash after wiping out my NTFS
> drive containing Money 2004.  I imported qif files from May 2006.  I
> reentered the checkbook data from then on, reconciling the balance each
> month.  In June, I was not surprised to have to enter a $599 withdrawal to
> the Imbalance USD account.  July reconciled fine.  In August there was a
> $303.43 deposit needed in the Imbalance account.  Sept, Oct, Nov statements
> reconciled fine.  In Dec, a 654.20 deposit was needed in the Imbalance
> account.  Each time, that the checking account doesn't balance, it is the
> INITIAL balance that is in error.  The reconciled balance from Nov bank
> statement was 679.50. When I tried to balance the Dec bank statement, the
> initial balance was higher by 654.20.  Of course, I have checked and
> rechecked all transactions and can't find any errors.  What could cause the
> reconciled balance to change between bank statements?
>
>
>