Reconcilciation problem with opening balance

[Maf. King]

On Tue 27 March 12 16:23:06 mullins brandy wrote:
> I created an account and I am ready to reconcile.  The starting balance is
> 0.  I put the ending balance what it should be, but since I have checked
> off all that was on the statement, it will not allow me to finish the
> reconciliation.  I created the opening balance under the equity account and
> the transfer to the assets checking account which I am trying to reconcile.
> I was unable to insert a starting balance for whatever reason when I set up
> the chart of accounts.  I thought I was to do it under the assets checking
> account option.  I could not do it there at the time. How do I get the
> opening balance and the ending balance to reconcile to 0?  So far, the
> ending balance has not changed.  I understand that it should read 0 in
> order to finish the reconciliation.  How do I proceed.  I do not wish to
> create a whole new set of accounts just to fix this.  I do not have that
> kind of time.  I just want to start from where I am to get this fixed.
> Thank you to anyone who can help.  I did read two of someone else's
> question regarding this, but that didn't help me anymore that telling me
> how to create the opening balance in the equity account. Brandy


Hi Brandy,

You can create an opening balance transaction at any time, just create it as 
you would any other transaction but set the transfer account to  
Equity:Opening Balances.

Reading your post, I'm not sure that you have got the concept of reconciling 
quite right in your head - you want to make GC agree with whatever statement 
your bank has sent you.  I suspect that it would be an unusual case that both 
opening and closing balances should be 0.

Usually, reconciling just involves entering the closing balance from the 
staement (if GC hasn't guessed correctly) in the reconcile box, and then 
checking off the transactions in GC that appear on your statement.

For this to work, you have to have the starting balance correct, which is 
usually the "last reconciled balance" (but for the first run through would be 
0 and you have an "extra" opening transaction if there was a balance on the 
account when your started using GC, which would probably be the account 
balance on the date that you started to use GC)

HTH,
MAf.