[GNC] Reconciling different periods?

[elvis]

Bite sized chunks, bite sized chunks.


Sometimes I get a few months and hundreds of transactions behind. I'll 
go a few days at a time to get started then weeks. Trying to remember 
what you did 3 months ago is hard! :-) But finding an error in 5 
transactions is easy, finding it in 500 is hard.

Remember, you are never alone. There's you and the future-you trying to 
figure out what you did just now.




On 14/12/18 8:07 pm, Finbar Mahon wrote:
> No Michael, thank you for the comprehensive answer.
>
> Like many others I suspect, Summer goes by quickly (in the Northern 
> Hemisphere) and doing the accounts falls by the wayside :-)
>
> I am catching up and discovered that the reconciliation had strange 
> balances (negative) in the reconciliation of one particular account. 
> So, what I wanted to do was go back to the last 'good' reconciliation 
> that I had on the printed bank statements for that a/c and work 
> forward to discover where things had gone wrong. I suspect a date 
> anomaly, an entry on the wrong date, maybe even the wrong year, finger 
> problems :-)
>
> So, the ideas on this thread indicate the way to do it is to ensure 
> the balance at the end of a good reconciliation is coincident with the 
> bank statement and look to see what income/expenditures are listed in 
> the attempt to reconcile after that date and may be wrong.
>
> I haven't tried that (coming up to festivites, other priorities) but 
> I'll report here on the outcome. :-)
>
>
>
> On 13/12/2018 23:57, Michael Hendry wrote:
>
>>> On 13 Dec 2018, at 17:13, Finbar Mahon <mahon.finbar at neuf.fr> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks, Michael, I have been trying that using end March of this 
>>> year as the last 'OK' date but doing it up to latest balance seems 
>>> to catch other errors, so I  was wondering if  I could 'stage' the 
>>> process.
>>>
>>> Looks like D's reply indicates I could do it by varying the closing 
>>> balance to coincide with one I am happy with. Maybe a slight problem 
>>> if the closing balance is duplicated elsewhere? Maybe unlikely.
>>>
>>> In fact by a combination of the two replies I can go back to the 
>>> last 'good' situation and use the closing balance there as a 
>>> starting point?
>>>
>>> I'll give the ending balance a try.
>>>
>>> F
>>
>> I’m not sure what you mean by “the ending balance” here.
>>
>> Let’s consider a simple situation: you have one bank account - what 
>> we in the UK call a “current account”.
>>
>> For this example, consider that your financial year starts on the 1st 
>> January 2018, and you have a bank statement for the period ending 31 
>> December 2017. This will have a figure (say £x) for the balance on 31 
>> December 2017.
>>
>> When you create this bank account in GnuCash, you set it up with a 
>> starting balance of £x.
>>
>> Throughout January and into February you enter every transaction that 
>> involves that account (payments into the account of cash and cheques, 
>> withdrawals in cash, by cheque, direct debit, and so on).
>>
>> When your statement arrives for the month ending 31st January, go 
>> ahead with the reconciliation. Because there are sometimes delays in 
>> transactions hitting the bank account, Gnucash will have the correct 
>> starting balance, but may have calculated the ending balance for the 
>> month incorrectly - let’s say you issued a cheque on 28th January and 
>> the recipient hasn’t paid it into his bank account yet. You should 
>> enter the bank’s version of the final balance for January into the 
>> “Reconcile information” in the box marked “Ending Balance”.
>>
>> Now press OK, and work your way through the reconciliation procedure, 
>> ticking the box against each transaction on the screen that matches 
>> one on the bank statement, which you should mark as reconciled in 
>> pencil.
>>
>> Once you have ticked all the transactions on the statement you should 
>> have a “Difference” at the bottom right of the Reconcile window of 
>> £0.00.
>>
>> If there is a discrepancy (i.e. “Difference” is non-zero), you have a 
>> problem which you need to resolve NOW, because in my experience banks 
>> and computers can add or subtract quite accurately, and you’ve just 
>> ticked the computer’s and the bank’s versions of the same 
>> transactions and they don’t match!
>>
>> Occasionally, you’ll discover that there’s a missing transaction in 
>> your records, leaving an unticked transaction in the bank statement. 
>> This could be a fraudulent transaction, but is more likely to be a 
>> standing order you’d forgotten to enter.
>>
>> Unless your bank account has very little in the way of transactions, 
>> you’ll almost certainly have several transactions recorded in GC 
>> which haven’t been ticked - like the unpresented cheque.
>>
>> Once you’ve cleaned up the reconciliation for January, wait for the 
>> February bank statement and reconcile that with GC.
>>
>> If you’re catching up on reconciliation a month or two late, don’t 
>> rush it! Complete one reconciliation by correcting any errors before 
>> you move on to the next one.
>>
>> Pardon me if I have misjudged your situation and made you feel you’re 
>> being patronised,
>>
>> Michael
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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