First Time to Reconcile - opening balance is wrong

[Mark Phillips]

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 4 February 2011 20:50, Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz>
> wrote:
> > I started with gnucash in January. I went through the setup wizard and
> > entered the opening balance for my checking account. It shows correctly
> in
> > the register window and equity account. But when I click on reconcile,
> after
> > adding a month of transactions, the opening balance in the reconciliation
> > window is $0.00. I have cleared all the transactions from my statement,
> but
> > I can't reconcile the beast because the opening balance is wrong. How do
> I
> > fix this?
>
> It is some time since I did the first reconcile on a new account, but
> if I remember correctly the opening balance itself should appear as
> one of the transactions to be reconciled, so the opening balance
> *should* be zero.  Then in the reconcile window ticking off the
> opening balance and all the transactions from your statement should
> give the correct end result.
>
> Does the opening balance transaction not appear in the reconcile
> window (it should appear as a deposit in the left hand window)?
>
> If not what does the opening balance transaction show in the register
> itself?
>

You are correct - the opening balance needs to be reconciled, too, so the
starting balance is $0.00. Perhaps that should be added to the docs, because
it is confusing to see a starting balance of $0.00.

Thanks!

Mark

>
> Colin
>