[GNC] Reconciling different periods?

[Stephen M. Butler]

On 12/14/18 2:39 PM, elvis wrote:
> 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.
>

The worst feeling is knowing that the accounts were balanced before you 
started the day.  Then finding that nothing balances all the way back to 
January.  Turns out that the last transaction for November showed up in 
January (my finger failed to stutter on the month number)!

Took awhile to track that one down and convince myself I wasn't going 
crazy.  So, even byte sized chunks may be bigger than you expect.

>
>
>
> 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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>

-- 
Stephen M Butler, PMP, PSM
Stephen.M.Butler51 at gmail.com
kg7je at arrl.net
253-350-0166
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