Correcting Opening Balances

[D]

Richard,

Many of us are using Gnucash for quite elaborate financial situations, so your fear that it can only handle "simple household transactions" is misplaced.

Every transaction in Gnucash can be edited, so you need to explain to us what you tried to do that wasn't working. Opening balances, for example, are just normal transactions; changing them is no different than changing any other transaction.

Two points to examine: 1 - are you clear about how Gnucash is double entry, and how that affects transaction entry? The Tutorial and Concepts Guide goes into that in some detail. and, 2 - are your accounts marked as "Placeholder" accounts? That would preclude any edits (although this is a less likely cause). Check this by editing the account details for an account in question.

As for your observations regarding the accuracy of data that is migrated from Quicken to Gnucash, most of us who have done this have encountered such hiccups, because of the ways that the two applications document certain types of transactions. Quicken, for example, handles gains from stock sales very differently, as I recall. Oh, and there is the fundamental difference that Gnucash is strictly double entry, while Quicken is not strict about it at all. Everyone who has made this jump goes through an adjustment from "categories" to "accounts". Oh, and there are no "Classes" in Gnucash.

David

On January 14, 2018, at 1:08 AM, Richard Claeys <rclaeys at accesscom.com> wrote:

I migrated my many years of Quicken files from our Mac to our PC, then
downloaded and installed GnuCash to handle household spending and investment
transactions going forward.  While the initial results have been
encouraging, my major problem is the balances shown for each account.  For
instance our primary bank account is inflated by a factor of 10, while our
investment accounts are totally inaccurate with closed or hidden accounts
back, various securities in the wrong account, and all totals out of
alignment.

 

I was hoping that our January banking and brokerage statements would serve
as the basis for cleaning up and resetting our accounts, but I have been
unable to change any of the opening balances or rearrange current
portfolios.  Is there a method to make these changes at the outset, or do I
have to live with GnuCash only as a program for simple household
transactions?  Please let me know what I am missing or what can be done to
make our current account information accurate in the GnuCash format.

 

Thank you in advance,

 

Richard Claeys

Saratoga, CA

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