Reconcile does not work for me

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Svetoslav Trochev <sal_electronics at hotmail.com> writes:

> Derek Atkins wrote:
>> Once you reconcile an account you CANNOT enter previous history into
>> that account.
>>   
> Hi Derek,
>
> Could you please expand your view why I cannot or shouldn't enter new
> history after I reconcile an account? I am not an accountant and I would
> like to understand better the implications of what I am currently doing.
> For that I am going to provide an example. I have an old account open on
> Jan 1 2000 for example. I started using accounting program on Jan 1 2007
> and the balance on that day was $1000 for example.
> 1. I create an account with Opening Balance of $1000
> 2. I have entered every transaction since Jan 1 2007.
> 3. Then I had all my statements since Jan 1 2007 reconciled and
> everything is ok.
> 4. After I am done with that I am ready to enter the history for 2006.
> 5. I create a new Opening Balance transaction that reflects the balance
> of the account as Jan 1 2006.
> 6. Enter all my transactions for 2006. This is very long process that
> takes some time. That is way I keep modifying the Opening transaction of
> Jan 1 2007 in order to maintain the current account balance until I am
> done..
> 7. Once history for 2006 is entered I can reconcile the statements for
> 2006. In Quicken I had no problem because when I start reconcile wizard
> it ask me to enter the starting and closing date of my bank statement.
> After that it calculates the opening and closing balances of my account
> for those days and ask me to confirm the calculated balances and allows
> me to adjust them if needed. Finally I can reconcile the old statements.
> GnuCash is not capable of doing that because it assumes that statement's
> starting value is the  reconciled  value of entire account. This is
> correct only if reconcile statements sequentially and you cannot skip a
> period and come back and reconcile the skipped period. The only
> workaround I found is to reset all reconcile flags and reconcile all
> statements from Jan 1 2006. This is very slow process and I hate to do
> it that way.
> So here is my questions that are bugging my mind since I encounter this
> issue:
> 1. What do I reconcile: a statement or and account?

You're reconciling your GnuCash account to the Bank Statement.

> 2. If I am reconciling a statement why GnuCash is not allowing to enter
> all parameters of that statement like starting date, starting balance,
> end date and the end balance as they appear on my bank statement?

This is your confusion.  

GnuCash always reconciles from the beginning of time to the statement
date.  So when you add earlier transactions you're destroying the
original reconciliation.

-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