Retained Earnings amount not displaying in Balance Sheet

[David Carlson]

On 6/3/2013 9:54 PM, vitaeterna wrote:
> I figured out that something happened on July 25, 2012.
>
> On July 24, the balance sheet displays like this:
>
> Balance Sheet 2012-07-24
>
>                	               	               
> Assets	   	   	   
> Assets	   	   	-$1,510.48
>        Current Assets	   	-$1,510.48	   
>              Petty Cash	$0.00	   	   
>              Checking Account	-$1,510.48	   	   
>              Savings Account	$0.00	   	   
>       Total Current Assets	   	-$1,510.48	   
>        Accounts Receivable	   	$0.00	   
>              HST Charged to clients	$0.00	   	   
>       Total Accounts Receivable	   	$0.00	   
> Total Assets	   	   	-$1,510.48
> Total Assets	   	   	-$1,510.48
> Liabilities	   	   	   
> Liabilities	   	   	$4,500.00
>        Credit Card	   	$0.00	   
>        Shareholder Loans	   	$4,500.00	   
>        Accounts Payable	   	$0.00	   
> Total Liabilities	   	   	$4,500.00
> Accounts Payable	   	   	$0.00
>        Accounts Payable	   	$0.00	   
> Total Accounts Payable	   	   	$0.00
> Total Liabilities	   	   	$4,500.00
> Equity	   	   	   
> Equity	   	   	$0.00
>        Opening Balances	   	$0.00	   
>        Retained Earnings	   	$0.00	   
> Total Equity	   	   	$0.00
> Retained Losses	   	   	$6,010.48
> Total Equity	   	   	-$6,010.48
> Total Liabilities & Equity	   	   	-$1,510.48
>
> But on July 25, the balance sheet displays like this:
>
> Balance Sheet 2012-07-25
>
>                	               	               
> Assets	   	   	   
> Assets	   	$0.00	   
>        Current Assets	$0.00	   	   
>              Petty Cash	$0.00	   	   
>              Checking Account	-$1,510.48	   	   
>              Savings Account	$0.00	   	   
>       Total Current Assets	   	-$1,510.48	   
>        Accounts Receivable	$0.00	   	   
>              HST Charged to clients	$0.00	   	   
>       Total Accounts Receivable	   	$0.00	   
> Total Assets	   	   	-$1,510.48
> Total Assets	   	   	-$1,510.48
> Liabilities	   	   	   
> Liabilities	   	$0.00	   
>        Credit Card	   	$0.00	   
>        Shareholder Loans	   	$4,500.00	   
>        Accounts Payable	   	$0.00	   
> Total Liabilities	   	   	$4,500.00
> Accounts Payable	   	$0.00	   
>        Accounts Payable	   	$0.00	   
> Total Accounts Payable	   	   	$0.00
> Total Liabilities	   	   	$4,500.00
> Equity	   	   	   
> Equity	   	$0.00	   
>        Opening Balances	   	$0.00	   
>        Retained Earnings	   	$0.00	   
> Total Equity	   	   	$0.00
> Retained Losses	   	   	$6,010.48
> Unrealized Gains	   	   	$
> Total Equity	   	   	$
> Total Liabilities & Equity	   	   	$
>
> I cannot see any transactions that are posted on July 24 or 25.  As you can
> see the indentation changes a little bit from one day to the next, which is
> not important.  But the Total Equity and Total Liabilities & Equity have
> suddenly gone blank, which does look funny.
>
> This has got me stumped!
>
>
vitaeterna,

Between those two dates the values $4,500.00 and $1,510.48 disappeared
and Unrealized Gains appeared.  Shareholder loans seems to be involved. 

There is an undocumented bug in GnuCash that occasionally allows the
creation of out-of-balance transactions possibly involving purchase or
sale of 'commodities' that look fine in the register.  They can even
have a different date than the date that reports show for the error. 
When I have seen it, I needed to completely delete the transactions
involving the suspected values and re-enter them with the correct date
manually, and **very important** -  do not let GnuCash auto-fill any fields.

Try deleting and re-entering any transactions that involve Shareholder
loans and/or either of those two values, and keep your fingers crossed. 
Let us either way if it works or not.

David C