Start with the Past and Work to the present

[David Carlson]

On 8/15/2011 10:41 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
> "Patricia J. Hawkins" <phawkins at connact.com> writes:
>
>>>>>>> "P" == Possum  <mpskinner at gmail.com> writes:
>> P> This will be over a 7 year period. There are no more than 250 transactions.
>> P> One of the reasons I want to do this is so I can understand what I  have
>> P> been doing better and print out records.
>>
>> P> What do you do to separate the years. Perhaps each year has a new GnuCash
>> P> file.
>>
>> No need.  Just enter the transaction dates correctly, with the correct
>> year, of course, and Gnucash will track that for you.
> Indeed.  250 transactions are not a lot of transactions.  GnuCash can
> handle that quite easily, so just enter them into a single data file.
>
> My only caution is that you cannot reconcile your accounts until all
> your history is in place.  Reconciliation is always from "the start of
> time" through the reconcile date.  So once you reconcile it's much
> harder to add historic data.
>
> -derek
Actually, you can reconcile the past later.

It would require some carefully added temporary transactions to offset
whatever is still missing.  It's just not the easiest thing to do, as
Derek points out.

David Carlson