Bank account balance incorrect after import from Quicken

[Tom Allred]

David,

Thanks for the reply.  I'm hoping that gnucash will be a suitable
replacement for quicken which has served me well for 20 years.  Yes, it's
been a little frustrating so far.  It's nice that folks have offered
suggestions but the focus seems to be my lack of understanding of accounting
or some error I made during import.  The only thing that's confusing me is
why an accounting program would arbitrarily create an erroneous transaction.
Magical transactions don't seem fundamentally sound.  People seem to assume
that gnucash can't make errors so it must be me.  I couldn't have entered an
incorrect balance during import because there are no questions like that
during the import process.  It's actually very nice that the import process
is so automated.  Just not comforting that the process is sticking in
transactions that don't exist in my quicken data that causes errors.  I
guess it must be that people aren't really familiar with the import process.
Perhaps my posts in this thread will serve as the write-up of my experience
since I think I've already detailed it as well as I can. If I discover other
flaws from the import then I'll add to the thread.

Fingers crossed,
Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: David T. [mailto:sunfish62 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2015 11:47 PM
To: tallred7 at triad.rr.com
Cc: edodd at billiau.net; gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: Bank account balance incorrect after import from Quicken

Tom,

I suspect that what happened was that when you imported your Quicken file,
you were asked what your opening balance was, and you told GnuCash the
amount. GnuCash then created an Opening Balance transaction to account for
the existence of your money. Since your Quicken file already had an opening
transaction, however, this caused a duplication. Instead, you should have
simply skipped having GnuCash account for your opening balance, since you
had already done so. 

I believe that deleting the transaction (as you describe) is perfectly fine.

Once you have determined that the balances are accurate, you should most
likely focus your attention on determining that GnuCash has used accounts
for your transactions that make sense for your accounting situation. Many
find that the import causes transactions to be categorized in unexpected
ways. These are easy enough to fix, but it is helpful to look for them.

As an aside, Quicken is less strict in its accounting implementation, and
will allow transactions to be one-sided. GnuCash requires every transaction
to have at least two splits. I used Quicken for 15 years before
transitioning to GnuCash 10 years ago, and dimly remember having to clean up
a bit. 

Also, since GnuCash is a volunteer effort, some areas (like documentation)
are not as well maintained as others. As a user, I have attempted to help
out with the documentation, and I can understand the frustration at holes
such as this. Since you seem to be quite engaged in this, I would humbly ask
you if you could write up your experience of the overall import process;
there is currently a drive to document the import procedures better, and
having a first-hand write up would be excellent.

Cheers,
David

> On Sep 1, 2015, at 11:15 PM, Tom Allred <tallred7 at triad.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> David,
> 
> I haven't been using this mailing list long enough to know how easy it 
> is to look back at a thread but there are more details in the previous 
> posts.  One of the problems of using a list instead of a forum...  I 
> appreciate your willingness to help.  First, I'm not a newbie to 
> accounting.  I've taken a couple of accounting courses in the past, 
> ran my own business for a long time, and have been using quicken for 
> 20 years.  Yes, quicken uses "categories" instead of "accounts" but 
> you still have to have at least two sides in a transaction.  I have 
> read the gnucash manual through chapter 3 plus other sections that 
> seemed like they may be pertinent, including the parts on importing 
> quicken QIF files which, BTW, has 3 blank pages where some QIF topics are
supposed to be.
> 
> Yes, the closing balance in gnucash doesn't match quicken.  The 
> problem is the "magic" transaction gnucash created during import that 
> offset the opening balance entry in the account in 1995.  There is my 
> original transaction opening the account with a deposit, and the 
> "magic" transaction reversing it with a withdrawal on the same date.  
> Both entries are exactly alike except one is a deposit and one is a 
> withdrawal.  If I delete the withdrawal then I have the correct 
> current balance.  When Geert replied to my original post he said the 
> account an opening balance entry is normally applied against is 
> "Equity:Opening Balances" which didn't exist in my account list after 
> creating the database by importing the QIF file.  Today's post was 
> explaining what I had discovered since our previous exchange.  My plan 
> at this point is to delete the "magic" transaction, which has a 
> Reconciled flag of "n", and continue looking for other inconsistencies 
> between gnucash and quicken.  If it doesn't matter that gnucash used 
> the Retained Earnings account instead of Opening Balances for the 
> opening balance entries in other accounts then I'll just leave them alone
and carry on.
> 
> Thanks,
> Tom
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David T. [mailto:sunfish62 at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2015 10:20 PM
> To: tallred7 at triad.rr.com
> Cc: edodd at billiau.net; gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Subject: Re: Bank account balance incorrect after import from Quicken
> 
> Tom,
> 
> Whether GnuCash uses "Equity:Retained Earnings", "Equity:Opening 
> Balances", or even "Equity:What The Heck!" is immaterial. What matters 
> is the amount that gets put into the checking account in this 
> transaction. If this amount is not correct, then we have to examine 
> what number GnuCash used for the opening transaction, and why it is being
added.
> 
> Also, can you explain a little more fully how you are determining that 
> the balance has been thrown off? Is it because the closing balances don't
match?
> Or that you ran a reconciliation and the numbers didn't match?
> 
> Please also go back and read chapter 2 in the GnuCash Guide on 
> Accounting Basics-especially section 2.1.3 on double entry accounting. 
> It clearly explains *why* GnuCash creates what you are calling an 
> "offsetting transaction"-and it may help you to understand what is going
on.
> 
> David
>