what should I use as a starting balance?

[DaveC49]

Greg,

What you use as a starting balance depends to some extent why you are using
Gnucash and for what purpose. 

If it is simply for recording personal finances, then you can choose an
appropriate time that makes sense, e.g.  the closing date of your last bank
statement and opening date for the next statement period would be a
convenient point to choose as you have a defined bank balance value at that
data and a clear distinction in time between transactions which will or will
not be recorded in your set of accounts. An end of year or end of financial
year or end of any month could be an alternative starting point. You would
have to use the same start date for any other accounts you may be recording 
e.g. Home loans, savings accounts etc and obtain starting balances for all
accounts on the one date.

For business  and/or taxation purposes, the start date for recording is
usually the start of the current reporting period, usually annually , at
least for personal taxation and for businesses usually set by the reporting
requirements and business practices in the jurisdiction ( legal and
regulatory ) in which you are operating. In this case, if you are not sure,
it would be a good idea to consult a local accountant.

If for future comparison purposes you wanted to add historical data prior to
your initial starting balance dates, then as you add the data, you could
simply reset the starting balance and date of balance entries to equity to
an earlier date corresponding to the starting balance of that new data (
this assumes no reconciliation of your transactions has occurred, as
altering the dates and data may be both limited by any reconciliation and
the new data may have an effect on starting balance (if there were missing
data entries for example) of the reconciliation itself. 

Cheers David



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