[Bulk] messed up account

[David Carlson]

On 8/16/2011 3:49 PM, Harold wrote:
> I thought I was reconciling one of my checking accounts each month. I have a printed copy of each monthly statement starting in March, 2009 when I started using Gnucash. 
>
> After a recent lightning strike that took out my pc, printer, modem, router, and other things, I have recovered the details of the checking account and it has entries that look up to date (as in August, 2011). In trying to make sure that this account was OK, I noticed that the last time that it shows that it was reconciled was end of September, 2010. 
>
> I decided that the only way to straighten it out was to go back and reconcile each month until I get it up to date. The balance showing in the account doesn't match what the statement says should be the starting balance for October, 2010.
>
>
> Is there a shorter or quicker way to reconcile this account?
>
> How do I get the Gnucash account balance to be equal with the statement beginning balance for October, 2010?
>
> Thanks,
> Harold
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Harold,

Since you have a printed copy of each statement, it should be easy to
solve your issue.  The following is a general procedure that I have used
a few times, and you may not need to do every step to solve your
particular issue.

Open GnuCash and open that checking account register.  Starting with the
present statement compare the register balance to the statement
balance.  In my case, and for most people, every few days there is
enough of a gap in activity that the two balances are equal. 

If there are places where they should be equal but they are not, the
amount of the error may give you a clue about where to find the
discrepancy.  Go back several months and compare again.  Once you find a
point where there is no discrepancy, you are close to finding the
difference.  In your specific case, you may find such a point somewhere
between March 2009 and October 2010.  Once you find the specific month,
you need to do the normal things to isolate which transaction(s) do not
match the statement.  If you needed to do some reconstruction to balance
some other account, there may be an accidental double entry, for example.

If there is no discrepancy in the balances even in the current
statement, then you are nearly done. 

You do not need to reconcile each statement individually

Simply start a reconciliation in GnuCash for the date of the
next-to-last statement.  You may find some 'new' transactions with very
old dates that need to be marked or un-marked to complete the
reconciliation.  Don't worry about transactions dated after the
reconciliation date that are already reconciled.  GnuCash will ignore them.

Repeat for the current statement.  That's it.

Good Luck.

David Carlson




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