Starting Balance for reconciliation has changed

Michael Hendry hendry.michael at gmail.com
Mon Mar 17 04:12:04 EDT 2014


On 16 Mar 2014, at 22:20, Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 16 Mar 2014, at 17:39, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> Michael,
>> 
>> The problem of a mismatch on the Opening balance in reconciling is addressed in the Tutorial at http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/txns-reconcile1.html
>> 
>> If I were in this situation (which I have been before), I would continue the reconcile process and see whether I can get the ending balance to match up. If it does, then there would be nothing more to worry about.
> 
> I had this (fanciful?) idea that everything I did to my xxx.gnucash file was faithfully recorded in the corresponding log, and that I could move from one xxx.gnucash file to its successor by reenacting those transactions. As I’ve tracked down the pair of files between which the erroneous entry was made, it should be child’s play to find the faulty transaction.
> 
>> 
>> If it doesn’t, then you will have to try and track down the transactions (and I make that plural since you say you already looked for a single transaction in the value of the discrepancy) that somehow got its flag changed.
> 
> I may well have to resort to this, but I thought there would be a smarter way.
> 
> Michael
> 
>> 
>> HTH,
>> David
>> 
>> On Mar 16, 2014, at 10:08 AM, Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Dear Users
>>> 
>>> I started to reconcile my RBS account today, but noticed that the Starting Balance on the bank statement (£4405.62) didn’t match that in the reconciliation window (£4386.52).
>>> 
>>> Tracking back, I had recorded the last reconciliation on 25th Feb 2014, so I opened a series of XXX.gnucash files to track down the problem.
>>> 
>>> Files up to and including…
>>> 
>>> 2014 02 25 10 51 24.gnucash showed the correct starting balance for the reconciliation I had been about to undertake on 25th Feb.
>>> 
>>> Files…
>>> 
>>> 2014 02 25 10 55 00.gnucash showed the correct starting balance following the reconciliation I’d just undertaken (£4405.62)
>>> 
>>> 2014 02 25 11 03 27.gnucash showed the correct starting balance following the reconciliation I’d just undertaken (£4405.62)
>>> 
>>> 2014 02 25 11 25 04.gnucash showed an incorrect starting balance (£4386.52).
>>> 
>>> 
>>> [I’ve inserted spaces in the filenames to make the dates and times easier to read].
>>> 
>>> My conclusion is that I’ve done something wrong between 11:03 and 11:25 on the 25th of February.
>>> 
>>> I’ve looked at the xxx.log files for the times surrounding these xxx.gnucash files, but can’t see any reference to changes in the RBS account.
>>> 
>>> If I’ve accidentally changed the value of an already-reconciled transaction, shouldn’t I see this in one of the log files?
>>> 
>>> I’ve searched for a transaction with a value of £19.10 (the difference between the starting balances) but found nothing.
>>> 
>>> Any advice on how I should proceed?
>>> 
>>> Michael
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> gnucash-user mailing list
>>> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>>> -----
>>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>> 
> 

Reporting that I’ve managed to fix this problem, and recording what I did, in the hope of helping anyone who finds himself in the same situation.

I attempted reconciliation of the bank account with the most recent bank statement, and found (as expected) that the reconciliation was out by £19.10 - the bank statement showing a higher balance than my file.

I identified the last-known-good and first-known bad .gnucash files, as above.

I opened these files one by one, opened the register for the bank account, produced a report for the account, and exported these to PDF files.

I opened these PDF files, displaying them side-by-side, and paged through them in parallel until I found the point at which the balance discrepancy appeared.

What I found was that the record of a monthly direct-debit for pet insurance on 15th April 2013 had been changed from £21.28 to £40.38, resulting in the bank balance being reduced by £19.10. Editing the faulty (and already reconciled) transaction restored sanity to the accounts.

This adjustment didn’t result in a warning that I was editing a reconciled transaction - I seem to recall being warned in the past - and the difference is the change in monthly payments that took effect on 12th March 2014. I had changed the Scheduled Transaction on receiving notification of the changed premium, but have no recollection of making a retrospective adjustment.

Michael




More information about the gnucash-user mailing list