Reconciling questions

[Tommy Trussell]

On 5/21/08, timzak <tzakharov at charter.net> 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.

I'm not sure I understand the question, but I believe you don't HAVE
to reconcile anything -- assuming everything you do is perfect and
always in agreement with the bank! (Reconciling is just a method of
verification with the bank statements.)

>  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?

You can either a) ignore all transactions before January 1st, and
adjust your starting balance to bring the first January reconcile to
zero, or b) you could go ahead and enter all the December transactions
from the statement into December. (In my opinion this might be less
error-prone because it will be easy to match all the transactions.)
You still have to enter a starting balance, but if you enter the
transactions it can be equal to the statement's starting balance.

HOWEVER on both of my answers IANA (I Am Not an Accountant) so others
may be able to clarify, amend or correct what I've written.