Reconciliation mess up

[David Carlson]

On 9/7/2014 9:40 AM, Raven Long wrote:
> I haven't touched gnucash in 6 months. The last time I did, I tried
> reconciling the last few months. After starting in again this week, and
> adding a bunch of new information, I tried starting to reconcile again. But
> there's a huge error, I think from doing something wrong 6 months ago. The
> starting balance for the reconciliation is way off. I've only had the
> account for a year, and would just start the reconciliation over from
> scratch, but I can't figure out how to do so. I can't even find
> reconciliation reports to check what I did previously.
>
> Can anyone suggest how to proceed from this point?
>
> Thanks,
> Raven
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Finding the easiest solution will require some sleuthing.  If you know
that the account was reconciled correctly at some point in the past,
then you can start there and see if the register balance matches the
statement balance for that date.  If it does not, is it off by an amount
that might match outstanding checks for that date? 

Filter the register to hide reconciled transactions and look for
unusually old un-reconciled transactions.  If there are any incorrect
ones, fix them then try to reconcile to the next statement, ignoring any
error in the starting balance.  Mark all unusually old transactions as
reconciled when you do that first reconcile.  That should work even if
there are many older un-reconciled transactions if they are all correct,
but just not reconciled. That will often get you back on the path to
reconcile remaining months' transactions.

Good luck.

David C