Reconciliation: Incorrect Starting Balance

[David]

So, an imbalance in the future reconciled can make a past reconcile go nuts.  A workaround is to add a future fake reconciled to adjust the early start to zero for the past date you are reconciling.  Once there are no future reconciled it should have to be set to zero and is not needed.  Probably a lot of this problem came from future reconciled items.
 

 If reconcile only considered dates <= the reconcile date for the starting balance, a past reconcile redo would work more as expected.  Of course, if the are reconciled items you need to uncheck to reconcile an old statement, you will need to unreconcile them individually, first.

Some sort of administrative reset all to unreconciled would mean that you could reconcile the whole account to the last statement.  Of course, you would need to check a lot of transactions, so that is not easy, either.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com>
To: David <dgpickett at aol.com>
Cc: gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Sent: Sun, Oct 27, 2013 5:43 pm
Subject: Re: Reconciliation: Incorrect Starting Balance


On 27 October 2013 18:19, David <dgpickett at aol.com> wrote:
> Today a reconcile on the first chronological transaction, starting balance
> is $3,137.26 but the ending balance is the running total is the amount of
> the first transaction.
>
> I do nothing, because this cannot be reconciled until I change my fake to
> erase that starting balance.  The starting balance of the chronologically
> first transaction must always be zero.  That is what is broken.

The starting balance is the sum of all reconciled transactions in the
accounts for all dates.  So if you see a starting balance (in the
reconcile window) of $3137.26 then that means that the sum of all
reconciled transactions in the account add up to that value.

The ending balance is up to you to enter, gnucash guesses it from the
date that you enter, but it is up to you to put in the correct value
(normally from your bank statement).

Colin

>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com>
> To: David <dgpickett at aol.com>
> Cc: gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Sent: Sun, Oct 27, 2013 12:50 pm
> Subject: Re: Reconciliation: Incorrect Starting Balance
>
> On 27 October 2013 16:12, David <dgpickett at aol.com> wrote:
>> When I reconcile the very first by date transaction of $n, creating a
>> running balance of $n, I should never be told there is $6.37 already
>> balanced, unless there is a hidden transaction or split with an earlier
>> date, but there it is.
>
> Sorry, don't know what you mean by reconcile the very first by date
> transaction.  Have you unreconciled all the other transactions?
> Remember the Starting Balance shown on the reconcile dialog includes
> all reconciled transactions, not just ones before any particular date.
>  Please describe exactly what you are doing when you reconcile the
> first transaction.  What does the Starting Balance in the reconcile
> dialog show? What value are you putting in for Ending Balance?  What
> do you do next and what happens?
>
> Colin
>
>>
>> So, since we know there is hidden column of reconciled date, we can
>> manipulate the reconciled balance without messing up the running balance
>> by
>> putting in an earlier transaction, reconciling it, change the date to
>> 2099-12-31, change the balance to whatever the reconcile is off.
>>
>> It's a great workaround for an aggravating bug that the developers have
>> adopted as their child that can do no wrong, just blaming the data entry
>> troops and suggesting a search for an invisible needle in a haystack.
>> Well,
>> in this life there is a little insanity everywhere.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com>
>> To: David <dgpickett at aol.com>
>> Cc: gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
>> Sent: Sun, Oct 27, 2013 4:15 am
>> Subject: Re: Reconciliation: Incorrect Starting Balance
>>
>> On 26 October 2013 22:52, David <dgpickett at aol.com> wrote:
>>> There must be a hidden date, that redating an early reconciled
>>> transaction
>>> to way later allows you to balance the first transaction.
>>
>> I still don't understand exactly what problem you have.  Are you
>> saying that the Starting Balance as shown on the Reconcile window is
>> not the sum of all reconciled transactions?  Changing the date on a
>> reconciled transaction does not change the Starting Balance on the
>> reconcile window.  Try it and see.
>>
>> Colin