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

[doncram]

Thanks Derek Atkins on all my questions.

To myself, about how:
*With a given Income Statement or other report open, select Edit / Report
Options, then General to change date range, then hit Apply, and the report
updates.
*If a General Ledger report shows "Edit report options", you can click on
that directly, or select Edit / Report Options, and go to Accounts tab and
select All accounts.
*In the Tools / General Ledger, the date range is accessed by View (rather
than Edit) / Filter By / Date.

I will have a think about whether using Reconcile is something you could do
as part of your own approach to "close" a period, in a way that you could
later track down accidental additions as Derek suggests.  I notice the
Filter By / Status tab allows you to choose to select ledger entries by any
combination of "Unreconciled", "Reconciled", "Cleared", "Voided" and
"Frozen" statuses.

I don't know what "Frozen" means yet, or whether that can be used in your
own approach to closing a period.  Neither Help nor the Tutorial and
Concept Guide within GnuCash shows any result when searching on "Frozen" or
"Freeze" as a possible keyword.

Thanks so much for helping me along!  I did try to look for info in the
documentation but wasn't successful, before asking.  --Don

On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 4:53 PM, Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
> > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
> -derek
>
> --
>        Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
>        derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
>        Computer and Internet Security Consultant
>
>