How to find and fix entry miss-dated to previous year (in General Ledger)

[Derek Atkins]

Hi Don,

On Fri, May 26, 2017 4:43 pm, doncram wrote:
> ​Because GnuCash doesn't provide password-locking on past years' data,
> it's
> possible you can accidentally give a past year's date to a new
> transaction.​  If that happened, how can you possibly find and fix it?

This is where account reconciliation comes in VERY VERY handy!  (see below)

[snip]
> Trying to see the expense account changes, I run Reports / Income &
> Expense
> / Income Statement, but the report labelled "Income Statement For Period
> Covering 01/01/2017 to 12/31/2017" doesn't show the 2015 expenses.  (Q1:
> how can I see an Income Statement for all time, or for 2015-2017, or for
> 2015?)

Report Options -> General -> select the starting/ending dates.

> Trying to see the entries in Reports / Assets & Liabilities / General
> Journal, I find that works, yay!  I can see the 2015 entries.
>
> Trying to see the entries in Reports / Assets & Liabilities / General
> Ledger fails...it states "Transaction Report: / No accounts selected  /
> This
> report requires accounts to be selected in the report options. / Edit
> report options".  Clicking on "Edit report options" seems to allow me to
> change a start date range for a report named "Transaction Report", but
> that
> has no effect.  Same if I change the report field to "General Ledger".
>  (Q2:  how can I get any General Ledger report that I can see?)

You need to select appropriate accounts and dates.  It sounds like you're
not doing that.

> I would like to see the entries in a General Ledger editing window and
> correct their dates, but I see no way to open such an edit window showing
> them.  (Q3: How can a 2015 General Ledger entry be changed?)

By default the GL only shows the current month.  You can change the
current view by:

View -> Filter By...  -> [Date]  -> [Show All]

>   Note, I do
> see that I could compose reversing entries and enter them for the same
> 2015
> dates, to undo the accidental entries, but it would be far more
> straightforward to just correct the General Ledger entries directly, like
> can be done for 2017 entries.
>
> Any suggestions will be appreciated! Thanks in advance, Don

If you know the Asset/Liability account, and if you reconcile it, you
could open up that account register, go to View -> Filter By... ->
[Status] and then uncheck Reconciled.  This will hide all reconciled
splits from that account which SHOULD leave your errant transaction at the
top.

Obviously this requires that you reconcile.  If you don't reconcile then
this trick wont work and it'll be much much harder to find your error.

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant