[GNC] Reconciling different periods?

[elvis]

On 15/12/18 9:16 am, Stephen M. Butler wrote:
> 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.


I used to have that problem, starting off from something that balanced 
last time but was now out.


I just do 1 or 0 transactions to start with, if you are reconciling with 
the same balance you had last time, it makes it easier to find something 
that has been unreconciled by mistake or a transaction moved about...  
hopefully it would just balance again, but leave the out of place 
transaction unreconciled on its own in the window.



>
>>
>>
>>
>> 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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>
-- 
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning."