Reconcile initial balance error

[Derek Atkins]

Why are the starting and ending balances 0?

Also, the lack of entry inthe Reconciled Balance and Difference columns
seems suspicious to me.

-derek

Quoting Steve Kelem <steve at kelem.net>:

> I'm trying to reconcile my 401(k) account.  When I click on all the 
> appropriate transactions, I get the Reconcile popup with the 
> following information:
>
> Funds In	Funds Out
> <Transactions checked and unchecked>
> Total: $	Total: $6,000.00
>
> Starting Balance:   $0.00
> Ending Balance:     $0.00
> Reconciled Balance:     $
> Difference:             $
>
> The "Finish" button is grayed out.
>
> This means I can't finish the Reconcile operation.
>
> Any ideas of what's wrong?
>
> Thanks,
> Steve
>
> Derek Atkins said the following on 04/30/2007 03:15 PM:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Steve Kelem <steve at kelem.net> writes:
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> Why are you reconciling the Primo Investments account separately?
>> Also, did you choose the "reconcile subaccounts" flag?  It's possible
>> that the $500,000 is the amount gnucash thinks you reconciled in
>> the subaccounts.
>>
>> The "starting balance" is what gnucash computes as your current
>> reconciled balance, so it thinks you already reconciled $500,000.
>> That leads me to believe that you already have reconciled transactions
>> (perhaps from the children accounts).
>>
>> As I repeat over and over, when you reconcile something that looks
>> strange, ignore the starting number and just worry about the ENDING
>> number.  Enter the correct ending balance and then when the dialog
>> comes up you'll have a better idea what's going on.  If the secondary
>> reconcile window doesn't look right you can just cancel and start over.
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> Yeah, this wont help.
>>
>>> Can anyone help me out?
>>
>> Hopefully I have..
>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Steve
>>
>> -derek
>>
>
>



-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available