Imbalance account

[david.carlson.417@gmail.com]

    Pete,What you describe sounds to me to be similar towhat happens if you have a payment to a mortgage lender from a checking account for e example.  When you make the payment you would probably generate a transaction with splits for principal, interest, escrow and possibly other items.  Then, when you download transactions from the bank, GnuCash may fail to match the payment to the correct existing transaction and create a new transaction with a transfer to Imbalance
That results in two transactions with the same amount and similar description and date.  That happens to me a lot.  Often you can catch it during the import, but sometime GnuCash stubbornly refuses to include the correct transaction in the list of possible matches.
When that happens to me I just delete the imported duplicate.
David C
Sent from my LG G Pad 7.0 LTE, an AT&T 4G LTE tablet.  




------ Original message------From: Mike or Penny NovackDate: Thu, Jul 14, 2016 7:42 PMTo: gnucash-user at gnucash.org;Subject:Re: Imbalance account
On 7/14/2016 12:20 PM, Pete Haworth wrote:> That's the strange thing.  On the same date as the Imbalance entry there is> a separate transaction with splits, one of which is for the same amount as> the Imbalance transaction but to a genuine account.  That transaction is> balanced.>> It feels like I should delete the Imbalance account transaction.  I can> always add it back if it causes bad things to happen.>> PeteAbsolutely go back and reread the tutorial. You are simply not getting the fundamentals of double entry bookkeeping.It might not be THAT transaction (the split to which you refer and say is in balance and has a line for the same amount properly assigned to an account. But there must be SOME transaction you entered somewhere(in some account)  which had that amount but for which you failed to specify the other account.Go to that transaction in Imbalance. What does it say is the other account? Go to that account and find the transaction (it will have IMBALANCE as its "other account". THAT is where you should make the correction (specify an account) or delete the transaction << if this was a partially entered transaction that you abandoned but then entered correctly, say with that split >>Michael D Novack_______________________________________________gnucash-user mailing listgnucash-user at gnucash.orghttps://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user-----Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.