Reconciliation: Incorrect Starting Balance

Ian Konen iankonen at gmail.com
Mon Oct 28 11:42:18 EDT 2013


David,

I'm only just now catching up on this discussion (I hadn't quite
understood how reconcile calculated a starting balance myself until
Colin and Derek explained it, so I appreciate the discussion even if
it seems a little circular).

I don't want to put words in everybody else's mouth, but I think the
point is even if you agree that what happened to your file is a user
error and not a bug, your "workaround" is unnecessarily kludgey.  If
there is a mistaken transaction (extra, missing or wrong amount) in
your account's past that is causing it to disagree with a bank
statement's calculation of your balance, and you *cannot find it and
correct the actual mistake* (understandable if you don't have access
to old bank statements or don't feel like combing through them) you
should fix it with a past-dated correction transaction, and then
reconcile that past-dated transaction so future balances will all be
in sync.  I don't understand why you're setting your correction to the
future.


On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 9:29 AM, David <dgpickett at aol.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
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-- 
Ian Konen
iankonen at gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/iankonen
978-821-6498


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