Reconciliation: Incorrect Starting Balance

[David]

Well, now it is a user error with a temporary workaround.  Since users seem to do this all too often, having a workaround is good.
 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com>
To: David <dgpickett at aol.com>
Cc: stepbystepfarm <stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com>; gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Sent: Sun, Oct 27, 2013 3:23 pm
Subject: Re: Reconciliation: Incorrect Starting Balance


David,

There is no hidden number here.  The starting balance in teh reconcile
dialog does not take your reconcile date into account; the starting
balance is the total of all reconciled transactions in the account. 
Period.  The transactions could be in the past or in the future; the
starting balance goes from the start to the end of time.

Another misconception you seem to have:  You cannot reconcile into the
past.  Once you reconcile at time T you cannot reconcile prior to that;
the reason is that reconciliation is always "from the beginning of time". 
So the fact that you are trying to reconcile your "first" transaction and
have a balance means that you have already reconciled the account, which
means, by definition, the first transaction should have already been
reconciled.  If not, then you did something wrong.  This is not a GnuCash
Bug, it is User Error.  Just like you cannot blame a hammer if you whack
your thumb.  It's not the hammer's fault or a problem with the hammer.

Yes, you are right that there is no way to "unreconcile a whole account." 
Patches to implement that feature are always welcome.  Until then...  you
could manually unreconcile everything by starting at the beginning and
then clicking in the R column of every transaction and then hitting
"Enter".

It sounds like your issue is that you mistakenly modified a reconciled
transaction; GnuCash TRIES to prevent you from doing that but there are
definitely ways to still make changes.  Of course, finding those changes
is definitely a challenge.

Good Luck,

-derek

On Sun, October 27, 2013 3:10 pm, David wrote:
> It makes it really hard to true up the books to look like reality with
> this hidden number rolling around in the reconciliation pile, from some
> mangled or deleted transaction.  I am not running a bank here, just trying
> to have a good record and status of accounts.
>
> I had to redo my books, and in my haste to have working books, sometimes I
> had to put in a flat transaction to balance things, and later I replaced
> it with a proper split.  Sometimes the dates were way off by accident, and
> had to be changed.
>
>
>
>  Since I did not find a workaround, I am pleased to make one and share it.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com>
> To: David <dgpickett at aol.com>
> Cc: clanlaw <clanlaw at googlemail.com>; gnucash-user
> <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Sent: Sun, Oct 27, 2013 2:37 pm
> Subject: Re: Reconciliation: Incorrect Starting Balance
>
>
> David wrote:
>
>>When I reconcile ....... 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.
>>
>>
> David, why am I getting the feeling that you don't know what the
> reconciling process is all about?
>
> If you think finding the data entry errors is difficult with gnucash (or
> any other automated bookkeeping system) you clearly have no experience
> what it was like in the old days when in addition there were errors from
> transactions not entered in balance in the first place, transcription
> errors when posting to the ledger, or errors in arithmetic.
>
> You haven 't heard of a bank teller or cashier taking hours to close out
> because there was an error to find, register not matching cash in drawer?
>
> When your books don't match the bank's books (you are in the reconcile
> process) you don't solve that by entering a "correction" transaction
> except for certain special situations*. You don't assume your books are
> wrong and in need of correction! Maybe the bank has misentered* a check,
> and of course you first made sure you didn't miss the charge of a fee,
> an outstanding check, a deposit that didn't get recorded, etc. And of
> course YOU might have mistentered a check (wrote the check for one
> amount but entered another in your gnucash books).
>
> In bookkeeping, if you made a data entry error then a correction
> transaction is the proper way to correct it. Easier to edit the
> transaction of course. But how could that be a reconciled transaction?
> You mad a mistake and the bank made the same mistake?
>
> Michael
>
> * Don't say never happens. I had to carry a "bank error" account for
> three months while a bank that had made a very small mistake in our
> favor by leaving the cents off a check had to get an executive level
> decision whether to correct it or give it to us (because we were a
> 501(c)3). Notice that this affected only the transaction that eventually
> canceled out the "bank error" transaction.
>
>
>
>
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-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant