Imbalance-USD

David Carlson david.carlson.417 at gmail.com
Sat Feb 1 17:41:05 EST 2014


On 2/1/2014 3:57 PM, Colin Law wrote:
> On 1 February 2014 21:31, jcard21 xxxxxxx <jcard21+gnucash at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 3:49 PM, Dr. Ray <drray at drraycharles.com> wrote:
>>>     I am entering all of my investments from 2013 for the first time,
>>> however each time I enter it, the value of "Imbalance-USD" increases. I am
>>> manually entering the security and placing an opening balance value as of
>>> 12/31/2013."
>> http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/oview-features1.html#oview-featuresaccounting2
>>
>> Double Entry: Every transaction must debit one account and credit
>> others by an equal amount. This ensures the "books balance" - that the
>> difference between income and expense exactly equals the sum of all
>> bank, cash, stock and other assets.
> To add further explanation I believe it is usual to setup opening
> balances using a transfer from an account Equity:Retained Earnings.
> Because you did not specify an account when you set them up GC has
> used the imbalance account.  You can correct this by opening the
> imbalance account then for each item there click on the transaction,
> click on the Split button at the top of the window then edit the split
> showing the imbalance account, changing it to the retained earnings
> account and hit Enter.  It will then disappear from the imablance
> account.
>
> Colin
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I suggest reading the manual sections about accounts and transactions. 
Then read the section about investments and make sure you have set up an
appropriate account tree with one or more brokerage accounts, security
sub-accounts and appropriate income and expense accounts.

Then go into the Imbalance account register to see which transactions
were not completed correctly with two or more accounts as described in
the transaction help.  Then you can correct those by right clicking on
the 'other' good account name and selecting 'Jump'.  From there you can
easily change 'Imbalance' to the account that you really want.

If you do not 'Jump' to the other account you can still correct the
transaction but it will work very slowly and the transaction will
disappear from view so you do not see the result of your change.

David C


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