Recording transactions that happened before the opening balance

[David T.]

If it were me, I’d:

a) Adjust the date of Opening balances to before my “new” old transaction—09/01/2016, for example.
b) Adjust the amount of the Opening Balance transaction to remove the “new” transaction amount—in your example by $200.

Note that if you have reconciled the account previously, GnuCash will bark about modifying reconciled transactions, and it would be wise to read Chapter 4.4 of the Tutorial & Guide so that you understand how to manage this circumstance.

Cheers,
David

> On Dec 8, 2016, at 9:31 AM, Jacques FLORENCE <jacques.p.florence at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I just started using gnucash.
> 
> TLDR: how to track transactions that happened before the opening balance,
> without modifying today's balance?
> 
> So let's say I did setup an account with opening balance $1000 at the
> 12/07/2016.
> Let's say that's the amount I actually have in my bank account right now.
> 
> I will record all this account's transactions from now on in the future.
> However, although I don't care about transactions prior to today, there are
> a few of them that I would like to keep track of.
> 
> Let's say I received a $200 gift from my mom three months ago, and I would
> like to register it. So I add a $200 transaction in the account with date
> 9/07/2016.
> (Let's say that it's important that I know the total amounts of gifts
> received from my mom during my whole life, as indicated by the total amount
> of income:gifts:mom'sGifts...)
> 
> The problem is that now my account has a value of $1200. But this is wrong!
> My account has a balance of $1000 right now as indicated by my bank
> statement.
> 
> One solution would be to modify the initial opening balance transaction to
> $800. But my balance right now is not $800, so I should change the date of
> this initial opening balance. But what should this new date be? Certainly
> not 9/07/2016: my account balance at that time did not have that value, as
> I omitted many transactions inbetween.
> Another problem with this is that if I want to add some other transactions
> of the past, I will have to readjust this opening balance transaction every
> time...
> 
> Is there a way to record transactions that happened before opening balance,
> without changing today's balance
> 
> Thank you for your help
> 
> Jacques
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