Wrong Begining Balance Prevents Reconcilliation

[Tommy Trussell]

On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 4:32 PM, Dorel Ciornei <dorelciornei at yahoo.com>
wrote:

> I am afraid I did not explain clearly enough this issue.
> I imported about three years worth of transactions from Quicken.On this
> particular account, they were already reconciled up to Dec. 31 2014 and
> they kept the 'reconciled' status after import.I am looking at the actual
> bank statement from let's say Dec. 31, 2014 and it shows a balance of $
> 996.46.In GNU Cash register the balance on Dec. 31st is identical,
> $996.46,  and all the transactions to this point seem to be marked as
> reconciled.
> Now I have entered more transactions and I am trying to reconcile again.In
> the Reconcile window I see the Starting Balance as some ($1300)... some add
> number.
> I have only a handful of transactions to reconcile and they are correct,
> but there is now a Difference Between Ending and Reconciled totals, and
> because of it it's not letting me finish the Reconciliation.I can not go
> and change the Equity Opening Balance to bring it to zero because it would
> change the final balance on my register (which is correct as I showed).
>
> Side note:
> I noticed a handful of transactions from the Income Account that were
> imported 'reversed':They were payroll checks income that were split in
> several tax accounts and deposited in two checking accounts.On these few
> transactions imported backward, the income showed in the "Charge" column
> and the splits to taxes and checking showed in the "Income" column.I had to
> go and move by hand the transactions to the opposite columns, so it showed
> correctly.
> It happens that one of the checking accounts where these were deposited to
> was the one I have issues with.I am sure there is a connection there, as by
> correcting the imported data, I changed transactions that were already
> reconciled.I am looking at that now.
>
> I am afraid this is not any clearer either.:-(
>
>
Actually I think your explanation makes perfect sense.

Go back and re-read the instructions for the Reconcile process. For your
convenience, here's a link:
http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/txns-reconcile1.html

Note especially the first Tip:

> Tip
> In the case when a previously-reconciled transaction is accidentally
de-reconciled, you can simply re-reconcile the transaction along with the
transactions on the *current* statement, and the result should balance.
>
> The case of accidentally deleting a previously-reconciled transaction
presents more of a challenge; if you cannot determine what was deleted and
restore it to the register, you will have to create a dummy transaction to
get the reconciliation to finish.

[Emphasis added to the word "current," meaning whatever statement you're
currently reconciling, not some past statement.]

This process has spelled out previously on this list in much more detail.
Try carefully repeating the reconcile process. Have you given special
attention to the specific transactions you un-reconciled to make sure their
totals are still correct (you haven't created any new un-balanced
transactions AND the splits increase and decrease the running totals in all
the appropriate accounts)?

If these are your own books, one perfectly valid response is to say "****
it, it's not worth the aggravation!" Create a new "correcting" transaction
within the period you're trying to reconcile. Label it clearly, write into
the description whatever curse words you're emanating at the moment,
whatever. They're your books, so do whatever works for you. Then select the
new transaction in the reconcile dialog, click the Finish button, and move
on. In the future, if you finally see the problem, AND you want to correct
it, delete the correcting transaction, then re-reconcile the CURRENT
statement (you can't really go back without starting over from scratch).



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