orphans and reconciliation. noob question

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

First, when you click on reconcile and it asks you for the reconcile date,
you should enter not only the closing date from your statement but also
the closing amount.  Your issue is that you are telling GnuCash that the
statement included the 20th item, so of course it is waiting for you to
mark it off.  Don't do that.  Tell GnuCash the correct balance.

Second, you do not have to pre-clear the items as part of your process. 
You can choose to, of course, and reconciling the account will pre-check
all cleared items prior to the reconcile date.  However you can just go
ahead and check them off during reconcile, which IMHO is faster than
clearing and then reconciling.

-derek

On Thu, March 28, 2013 3:48 pm, marty poulsen wrote:
>
>
> Distilled facts:
>
> I am running gnucash 2.4.11.
>
> I have, among others, a gnucash account for my bank checking account and a
> gnucash account for visa.
>
> Lets say from a starting balance of 0.00 in the visa account, I charge 20
> separate items on the card. All items are posted to the visa account, each
> with the default NEW (n) attribute.  The twentieth item was charged on the
> closing day of the account, and it too was posted at time of purchase.
> Arguendo, this date is, say, March 30, 2013. The visa statement arrives,
> containing the first 19 items as of the close of business on March 30,
> 2013.  But, the 20-th item is not listed on the statement, presumably
> because it was not submitted in time to make the closing date.  It will
> appear, of course, on next months visa statement.
>
> I check the 19 postings against my visa statement. No errors are found,
> and I change each of the 19 items from "NEW" to "CLEARED"  n->c.  I push
> the RECONCILE button, and specify a statement date of March 30, 2013.
>
>
> WHAT I EXPECT: I expect gnucash to to examine only the cleared items,
> calculate the sum of such items, and present such sum to me in the
> reconciliation window, such that when I push FINISH my gnucash checking
> account is debitted in the amount of such sum, and the visa account
> reflects a payment in the amount of such sum.
>
> WHAT I FIND, HOWEVER: ... frankly perplexes me.  The reconciliation
> process includes the uncleared  (ie NEW) final charge (the 20-th charge of
> my shopping spree lol),  and because the reconciled balance is not zero,
> will not allow me to FINISH the reconciliation.  When I BALANCE, gnucash
> creates an orphan transaction in the amount of the unreconciled balance,
> and posts this transaction to the gnucash Orphan account as well as the
> visa account. Both the orphan transaction and the 20-th charge remain as
> NEW transactions. And the orphan transaction reflects as a yet another
> (21-st) charge to the account.  (Intuitively, it seems to me that a
> balancing transaction should reflect as a payment, not a charge.  But ...
> I dont know.)
>
>
> How do I reconcile my visa account from this point, and have gnucash debit
> my checking account and credit a visa payment (as I know it does on the
> third reconciliation panel) ?
>
> In other words, what do I do with this "orphan transaction"?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> marty
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-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant