Reconciliation: Incorrect Starting Balance

[hendrik at topoi.pooq.com]

On Tue, May 29, 2007 at 10:09:03PM -0500, Tom Purl wrote:
> On Tuesday 29 May 2007 21:09, Derek Atkins wrote:
> > Quoting Tom Purl <tom at tompurl.com>:
> > > OS: Linux
> > > GC Verson: 2.1.2
> > >
> > > I have been using GnuCash to manage my checking account for years, and
> > > reconcile it every month.  However, when I tried to reconcile it this
> > > month, the "Starting Balance" amount was off by $6.36.  It should have
> > > been $497.11 (for example), but instead, that amount was $503.47.  When I
> > > try to reconcile my account, it therefore says that I'm off by $6.36.
> > >
> > > The previous month's bank statement had an ending balance of 497.11, and
> > > I am sure that everything balanced properly that month.  I am really
> > > perplexed as to why last month's ending balance of of 497.11 then
> > > "turned into" this month's "reconciled" value of 503.47.  I also checked
> > > every 6.36 transaction that has cleared over the last year, and they all
> > > are valid.
> > >
> > > How do I even begin to troubleshoot or fix this problem?  In the short
> > > term I guess I can just add a fake 6.36 transaction and then reconcile
> > > it, but I don't want to have to maintain a bunch of fake transactions in
> > > the long term.
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!
> >
> > Ignore the starting balance, put in the correct ending balance, and
> > try to reconcile.  Does that fail?
> 
> Yes.  In the end, I'm $6.36 off.
> 
> Thanks for the quick reply!

One thing I once did that halped was to diff the backup files that 
gnucash left behind, and to grep the diffs for dropped transactions of 
the right amount.  Of course now that gnucash compressed its files, 
you'd have to uncompress them before diffing.

That was on a Linux system.  I don't know what to do on Windows.

-- hendrik