First Time to Reconcile - opening balance is wrong

[David T.]

I think the change singles out an important circumstance; we'll see whether we can get this into the official documentation.

--- On Fri, 2/4/11, Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:

From: Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz>
Subject: Re: First Time to Reconcile - opening balance is wrong
To: "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Gnucash Users" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Date: Friday, February 4, 2011, 4:04 PM



On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 2:33 PM, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:





--- On Fri, 2/4/11, Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:



> From: Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz>

> Subject: First Time to Reconcile - opening balance is wrong

> To: "Gnucash Users" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>

> Date: Friday, February 4, 2011, 12:50 PM

> 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?



To Gnucash, your opening balance is zero when you start, since it calculates that figure on the fly. Really, it doesn't matter what the opening number is--does the ENDING number match your statement when you're done reconciling? If so, you are fine, and most likely, the next time you reconcile, it will match your statement.




BTW, I have asked that this information be added to the documentation, since it always seems to come up. The proposal I made is at: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=639264



David,

I got it sorted out. I commented on your great proposal in bugzilla and expanded it to read:

Note: Sometimes, the opening balance in Gnucash does not match that found on
your statement. This can happen the first time you reconcile your account or when a previously-reconciled transaction is de-reconciled or deleted. 


The first time you reconcile your account, the opening balance will be 0.00, and not the starting balance of your account. When you reconcile the account, the opening balance for the account will be included in the reconciliation, and the result should balance. 


In the case when a previously-reconciled transaction is accidentally de-reconciled, you can simply re-reconcile the
transaction along with the transactions on the current statement, and the
result should balance. 


The case of accidentally deleting a previously-reconciled transaction presents more of a challenge.; if you cannot determine what was
deleted and restore it to the register, you will have to create a dummy
transaction to get the reconciliation to finish.


Thanks,

Mark