Bank account balance incorrect after import from Quicken

[David T.]

Tom,

I’ll begin by saying that deleting the spurious transaction should not disrupt your accounts; there is nothing sacrosanct about the opening balances transaction. 

Next, I apologize; I was not trying to imply anything about you or your abilities. I was trying to get at what happened and why. The reason to do this is to help explain why you are getting results that are outside the norm and flat-out wrong, and also to determine whether there is a bug in the software. Given that this affects the actual accounting (as opposed, say, to the screen layout), finding where the issue lies is, in my opinion, important. I am trying to determine how this erroneous transaction is getting created.

Now, on to the details of our communication.

It is true that I have not imported my complete books into GnuCash for a long time, and the software has developed prodigiously in the decade since. Moreover, the initial import is a “corner” circumstance, in that it doesn’t happen often (one hopes), and the starting point is unique. Thus, I haven’t had experience with an initial import for a while, and my memory isn’t what it used to be. However, I believe that the only place in the New File/Import process where    GnuCash will create a transaction is for an opening balance. Furthermore, to create this opening balance transaction, GnuCash has to receive an indication of what the opening balance amount should be, and the only place I know of that GnuCash obtains this figure is from user input. Since you are getting an extra opening balance transaction that matches your opening balance, this is where I imagine the problem originated. 

I just tested out creating a new file and see that after one has created a new chart of accounts using the new file assistant, one is presented with a dialog box titled  that lists the accounts to be created—along with an Opening Balance column into which a user can enter a balance. Did you by chance make entries into that dialog? If you did, then GnuCash is supposed to create an opening balances transaction in that amount for you. That’s the only place in this process that I know of that GnuCash would actually create a transaction.

If this is not your experience, then I apologize again, and hope that someone else can duplicate your situation and locate the source of the problem. I am fresh out of ideas.

David


> On Sep 2, 2015, at 8:29 AM, Tom Allred <tallred7 at triad.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
>> 
> 
>