How to brute force correct a reconciliation

[John Ralls]

> On Apr 3, 2015, at 1:08 PM, C. Andrews Lavarre <alavarre at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi all.
> 
> On Fri, 2015-04-03 at 12:00 -0400, gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org
> wrote:
>> Subject: Re: How to brute force correct a reconciliation
> 
>>>>> There must be a way to tell it "Yes, I screwed up somewhere along the
>>>>> way, here is the correct balance number, pay no attention to all that
>>>>> math, I assume full responsibility."
>> 
>>>> The usual way to do that is to enter an "adjustment" transaction 
> 
>>> I think there is a button on the toolbar marked "Balance"
>> 
>> I think you're thinking of the Balance button on the Reconcile Window's toolbar. That will indeed create an adjustment transaction.
> 
> Thanks to all. Yes, I know I can (and have in the past) entered a split
> or new transaction, e.g., Financial Misc. or Opening Balance) to change
> the resulting balance in the account tab. 
> 
> That is not the problem. 
> 
> The problem is that the "Balance" column to the right in the account tab
> IS correct. But in the lower right corner of the double-paned
> Reconciliation window that you get when you click the "Reconcile the
> selected account" button (a book with a lifering)  the "Ending Balance"
> is correct but the "Reconciled Balance" is incorrect (probably as a
> consequence of having deleted a reconciled transaction), even when all
> the appropriate transactions have the "R" column. 
> 
> Yes, I screwed up by deleting a reconciled transaction, but it would be
> nice to be able to say mea culpa, change the "Reconciled Balance", leave
> a note for the auditors (if there ever are any) and get on with life.
> 
> As it is, I did my mea culpa with a payment of time. I created a new
> account with zero starting balance, and moved all the valid transactions
> from the faulty account to the new account, so all is well, and
> hopefully shall finish taxes in time. And definitely will try to avoid
> deleting reconciled balances. But it would be nice to be able to force
> it, more quickly.
> 
> Thanks for the participation. Happy Easter.

Andy,

The fields at the bottom right in the Reconcile Window are:
* Statement Date: Just there for info.
* Starting Balance: The value of all reconciled transaction at the beginning of this reconcile session. If you work only from statements this should match the beginning/opening balance on your statement.
* Ending Balance: This is the amount that you enter in the dialog box right after you click the Reconcile button. By default it’s the last balance on the date that you entered in that dialog; you want to (and undoubtedly did) edit it to match the closing balance on your statement.
* Reconciled Balance: The current balance accounting for all of the boxes checked in the Reconcile window. If there are no boxes checked, it will be equal to the Starting Balance. If every box that matches an entry on the statement is checked and there aren’t any entries on the statement that aren’t in your book, and all of the amounts match between the statement and the book, then it will match the Ending Balance.
* Difference: Ending - Reconciled.

So the way to force the Reconciled Balance is to add an adjusting transaction and reconcile it.

If you really did delete a reconciled transaction back when, then the starting balance won’t match the opening balance on your statement. As long as the difference between them is the same as the Difference entry, just bang the Reconcile button and mark up the transaction as necessary so that you and the hypothetical auditors know why it’s there.

That moving the “valid” transactions to a new account and balancing that account implies that there were *invalid* transactions that had somehow gotten reconciled: Perhaps what you did was accidentally move a reconciled transaction *into* this account from some other one. Was the Reconciled Balance larger than the Ending Balance?

Regards,
John Ralls