wrong starting balance on reconcile

[carpetnailz]

Thanks for various suggestions I received.

I decided the problem arose because somehow an $11 transaction from a
year-and-a-half ago had come "unreconciled"--I was able to see this by
checking with one of the saved early versions (nice that Gnucash saves
all those versions). I don't know if it was some kind of inadvertent
keystroke on my part or some program glitch. But re-clearing that item
balanced things out. 

This case does raise interesting questions, however, about society's
dependence on electronic accounting. If these changes I've made don't
leave a paper trail, what's to keep big and "inappropriate" changes
(accidental or intentional) from being made without leaving a paper
trail?

Nailz


On Mon, 2007-11-12 at 22:50 -0800, Kim_Wood wrote:
> I had the same issues when I first started using Gnucash.  I almost ditched
> Gnucash over what I thought was a pretty crappy reconciliation
> implementation compared to Quicken when I first started using it.  Quicken's
> reconciliation is a thing of beauty!
> 
> However, I have persevered with Gnucash, and it is just much better in so
> many ways than Quicken, that I will not go back to the dark side.
> 
> I have resolved my concerns with the reconciliation function by ensuring
> that the reconciliation balance agrees with the register balance at the
> reconciliation date.  When you open up the reconciliation screen, check that
> the balance shown for the selected reconciliation date agrees with the
> actual register balance.  I have had to manulally change the reconciliation
> screen balance to match the register a couple of times.  It then works fine. 
> I am sure that I have no earlier unreconciled transactions, or any other
> problems in my "very clean" register.  It has then all worked fine, and I
> have not felt too bent out of shape doing it.  My tension with the whole
> Gnucash reconciliation thing has pretty much gone away now.  
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Kim
> 
> 
>  
> 
> David T. wrote:
> > 
> > Having run into this a couple of times myself, I would recommend looking
> > around
> > again for another account that is out of whack. If after close
> > examination, it
> > doesn't pop up, create a dummy transaction against your Imbalances
> > account, and
> > hope that sometime down the line you find out which transaction got
> > screwed up
> > and can now be fixed. I simply created a "Zeroing Transaction" from
> > Imbalances
> > to the account in question.
> > 
> > This circumstance would be an argument for closing your files every year
> > and
> > starting up anew, but that's got its downsides.
> > 
> > I would hazard a guess that my solution wouldn't satisfy an accountant,
> > but
> > it's the best I can come up with, and solves the immediate problem in my
> > own
> > home finances. Yuck!
> > 
> > David
> >  
> > --- Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:
> > 
> >> Quoting carpetnailz <carpetnailz at researchintegration.org>:
> >> 
> >> > I'm trying to reconcile an account that reconciled OK last month but
> >> now
> >> > is showing the wrong starting balance by $11.00.
> >> >
> >> > I can't find any transaction in the past couple of months that might
> >> > account for that and can't think of any reason why the account would
> >> > have reconciled fine last month and then come up with the wrong
> >> starting
> >> > balance this month.
> >> >
> >> > Does anyone have any ideas?
> >> 
> >> Generally this happens if you:
> >> 
> >> 1) Forget to save the file.
> >> 2) Delete a reconciled transaction
> >> 3) Modify a reconciled transaction
> >> 
> >> There's really no other way for this to happen.
> >> 
> >> > Thanks.
> >> 
> >> > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> >> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> >> 
> >> -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
> >> 
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> > 
> > 
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