Reconciling questions

[Doug Laidlaw]

On Thursday 22 May 2008 1:46:59 pm Ronal B Morse wrote:
> On Wednesday 21 May 2008 14:37:33 timzak wrote:
> > Hi, I've been using Gnucash for about a month now and I'm
> > still learning about it.  I have input about 4.5 months
> > of data (from Jan 1st to present) and am pretty satisfied
> > with the program so far.  I have not yet done any
> > reconciling.
> >
> > 1) Is it required to reconcile accounts that are
> > reconcilable?  So far I've only cleared the transactions,
> > and everything seems fine.
> >
> > 2) (If I do decide to reconcile) how would I go about
> > reconciling January when my bank's statements appear to
> > be mid-month to mid-month.  I have no data in Gnucash
> > prior to Jan. 1st, so how can I reconcile January when
> > the bank statement begins in mid-December?
> >
> > Thanks for your time.
>
> I had a partial first month when I started Gnucash and my
> approach was to make a dummy transaction into the first
> month's entries that made the reconciliation work against
> the next bank statement I received (balance adjustment,
> ex:miscellaneous). Since then I have been scrupulous about
> reconciling against the statement.
>
> If you download account activity from your bank on a regular
> basis you can reconcile against cleared transactions. Use
> the cleared amount as the account closing balance in the
> reconcile dialog and check off the transactions that have
> shown to have cleared.
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If I open a banking account mid-month, I have a cashbook balance of some kind 
to show as the opening transaction.  Or, you camn set that figure as the 
opening balance in the New Account setup screen.  Checks written before 
starting to use the program, but not presented on that date, are the only 
problem.

Doug.