Balancing checking account with bank statement

[Diann]

Well, I am a very happy camper!  And, I just want to set the record
straight.  I am also very happy to report to you, that, YES, indeed!  The
ENDING BALANCE on the bank statement IS carried forward as the BEGINNING
BALANCE for the GnuCash reconciliation process for reconciling with each
month's bank statement!   I was so wrong, but I don't know what I did that
made it all so wrong.  Anyway, it's fixed!

I completely undid all of the reconciliations and started over from January
1, 2011.  I think my initial problem was in initiating GNCash as of January
1, 2011, where as my beginning balance for the new year was not the same as
the bank's previous month's ending balance, and I had some checks in
December that cleared in January, which had not been entered since I just
started using GNCash as of January 1st.  Am I confusing anyone?  

I have just finished - successfully finished - reconciling January, February
and March.  First quarter done and balanced.  Thank you all so much for all
of your help.  I particularly appreciated David Carlson's admonishment to
"take a deep breath, close GnuCash and check the weather outside...etc."
That was great!  Very good advice.   Thank you!


Diann I. Hayes
Legal Assistant
Horne Law Firm, PLLC
2315 Market Street
Wilmington, NC 28403
Tel:  910.254.7901   Fax: 910.254.7903
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Maf. King [mailto:maf at chilwell.net] 
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 11:25 AM
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Cc: Diann
Subject: Re: Balancing checking account with bank statement

On Monday 18 April 2011 13:48:44 Diann wrote:
> Thank you for responding.  No, the ending balance on the BANK statement is
> not the same as the RECONCILED balance on the checkbook ledger.  The bank
> does not have any information with regard to "uncleared" checks and
> deposits.  The bank statement only carries forward deposits and checks
> which have cleared.  In reconciling a Bank statement with a checkbook
> ledger, it has always been my experience, that the Ending balance on the
> BANK statements is the BEGINNING Balance on the RECONCILIATION of
> bookkeeping.
>

Hi Diann,

I have to disagree with you.  Reconciling is making sure that you -agree-
with 
what the bank says has happened.

The balance in the GC register may never be in sync with the bank's idea of 
the account's balance, but the RECONCILED balance should always agree at the

end of a reconcile.

Think of it this way:

You open the bank account, there is a zero balance.
You do some transactions (doens't matter for now if some haven't cleared
when)
the bank send you a statement. Opening balance = 0, closing balance = X.
You check through that statement, and see that you were expecting a balance
of 
Y, but that is because the final 3 checks haven't cleared yet.  You can see 
why the bank thinks that the balance is X, but you & gnucash know more than 
the bank.  You can agree on a balance of X. it makes sense. the bank haven't

made a mistake and processed some check twice. (Yay!)

You do some more transactions, the bank sends you another statement.  This 
time, the last thing the bank knew was that your balance was X, so their 
opening balance shows as X.  the closing balance is now Z.  your statement 
may _never_ show a balance of Y, depending on the order that things clear.
But you should still be able to "tick off" the things that the bank know
about 
and be able to agree that Z is a sensible number.

does that help?
Maf.