trial balance - how to find mismatch question

[David Carlson]

If you have multiple currencies  or if you buy and sell commodities or
securities  there is another level of opportunities for issues.

David  C

On Feb 15, 2018 5:55 PM, "Adrien Monteleone" <adrien.monteleone at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I just noticed the subject was wrong due to a user-digest error,
> re-applying the original.
>
> ———
>
> I’m having a bit of issue understanding the point of the trial-balance
> report in modern times. (I generally don’t use it as I mentioned)
>
> If each transaction self-balances, that is, debits = credits, how is it
> possible to add up the debits individually and the credits individually and
> not get a result that still balances? You can’t add up 1+2+3 = 5 and 1+2+3
> = 6. It’s a mathematical impossibility.
>
> In addition, if you enter a transaction that doesn’t balance, Gnucash
> forces it to balance by using either the imbalance or orphan accounts. So
> at least you’re alerted to amounts you need to fix, but technically, debits
> still equal credits.
>
> Let’s assume I entered a transaction backwards and debited my cash account
> instead of crediting it, and credited an expense account instead of
> debiting it. This should not affect the trial-balance. Sure, the amounts
> are wrong for each account, but they still balance. Debits still equal
> credits.
>
> If I transpose two digits (the divisible by ‘9’ trick) then as long as my
> individual transaction I did this in balances, it still shouldn’t show up
> as an imbalance on the trial-balance report. The other side would ALSO have
> to be transposed or incorrect to match it. Gnucash won’t save the
> transaction unless it’s balanced.
>
> I can’t see what possible error could produce individually balanced
> transactions (required by Gnucash) and yet still have a trial-balance where
> the debits do not equal credits AND both the imbalance account and orphan
> accounts are empty.
>
> (note, I understand why this report is run with paper records because
> you’re copying stuff all over the place and might do so incorrectly. But
> this isn’t the case with Gnucash)
>
> Regards,
> Adrien
>
> > On Feb 15, 2018, at 5:06 PM, Adrien Monteleone <
> adrien.monteleone at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The 1899 date seems to make me think that has something to do with a
> setting in your OS concerning how to interpret 2-year dates. (I don’t think
> Gnucash has this option, it might be hard coded)
> >
> > Try running the report again and make sure to enter the full 4-digit
> date and not just ’16’. Also, test with 12/30/2016 and 01/01/2017 and see
> if it does the same thing or only on exactly 12/31/2016. You might have
> some corrupt data. That might even be the source date of the imbalance.
> >
> > I just entered those two dates in the same report and it worked fine, so
> this wouldn’t be a generic bug to the app, though it might be a bug for a
> certain platform. (I’m on macOS 10.13 at the moment)
> >
> > Since you’ve narrowed down to a few weeks, I’d just take a look at the
> General Ledger which contains all transactions from all accounts. Click on
> View > Filter By… and set your date range. (maybe even a day before and
> after just to be thorough) Also be sure to check all boxes on the Status
> tab in the Filter options. You want to see all transactions for that date
> range. Then just look over them and see if anything looks out of place. In
> particular, look for either the amount you are out of balance by or half
> that amount if the variance is an even number. (meaning you have an entry
> that is entered in reverse debit/credit, or entirely duplicated)
> >
> > For myself, I think I want to tackle one other area first. I recall
> doing some re-organization and I went through a series of unposting paid
> invoices and reposting them, causing my lot assignments to get out of
> whack. I know I have some open lots that shouldn’t be there and many that
> are applied to the wrong documents. I’ll clean that up first, then re-run
> the trial balance and see if that does the trick. I’m not sure where the
> Trial-Balance report is pulling its numbers from, but it won’t hurt to
> perform that cleanup anyway.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Adrien
> >
> >> On Feb 15, 2018, at 2:35 PM, Elmar <etschme at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On 02/15/2018 02:28 PM, gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org wrote:
> >>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>
> >>> Message: 1
> >>> Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2018 13:27:17 -0600
> >>> From: Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at gmail.com>
> >>> To: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> >>> Subject: Re: trial balance - how to find mismatch question
> >>> Message-ID: <823DA1A8-B449-470F-AB10-E665056865EB at gmail.com>
> >>> Content-Type: text/plain;   charset=utf-8
> >>> ...
> >>>
> >>> Elmar,
> >>>
> >>> Reduce your ending date so the range is half of what it was. Re-run
> the report. Is it s[t]ill out of balance? Keep doing this till you get a
> balance, then set that ending date to a new start date, and start working
> forwards till you get out of balance again. This will help you narrow down
> where on the calendar the error occurred.
> >>>
> >>> Regards,
> >>> Adrien
> >> OK - did that and ran into something VERY strange.  Everything stayed
> in balance up to 07/12/2016.  Setting that as the start date and 12/31/2016
> as the end date, as soon as I hit "apply", QC overwrites the end date with
> - get this - 02/27/1899 !!!  This of course produces nonsense.  One day
> later (01/01/2017) works fine and shows the imbalance.  So, have I 1) found
> a bug, and 2) given I have narrowed the date range to a few weeks, what
> report should I run to find the weirdness? - Elmar
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