Correcting Opening Balances

[Tommy Trussell]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 11:32 AM, Richard Claeys <rclaeys at accesscom.com>
wrote:

> Here is an example of what I am encountering:  One of the accounts that
> popped up after the conversion from Quicken is a credit card that I dropped
> in 1998; when I click on "Delete Account" I receive a response along the
> lines of "Do you want to combine this with credit card xxxx?"  Apparently
> the double-entry accounting doesn't allow me to simply dispose of accounts
> that no longer exist.
>

I'm not sure what the limitations on deleting accounts might be, but
remember when you delete an entire credit card account you are not
proposing to delete transactions from just one account -- EACH transaction
will affect AT LEAST one other account, and if you deleted all of the
transactions it would throw off the balance of every checking account you
used to pay the credit card bill, and every expense account affiliated with
those transactions.

Over the many years I have used GnuCash I have used two basic methods of
handling accounts I don't use anymore. I either rename accounts or I make
them "hidden" accounts.

For example, if I get frustrated with Bank of Somewhere card and decide to
close my credit account, I close the account, and I can immediately change
the credit account's name from "Somewhere" to "CLOSED Somewhere" so I don't
accidentally enter new transactions. But the transactions are still readily
visible and adjustable. That situation might stand until the closing
statement arrives. If the account tree seems to be getting too cluttered
with accounts, another option is to a higher-level account heading so I
don't have to look through them. For example:

Liabilities
  Credit Cards
      Bank of Elsewhere
      Bank of Nowhere
  Inactive Cards
      Bank of Somewhere

The other option I mentioned is just to set the account type to "hidden"
and you won't see it in the account list anymore, and you won't be able to
select it when you're entering new transactions. But the transactions will
still appear in reports, just as you would hope. At any time you can choose
to show hidden accounts in the account listing.



> And as mentioned before, both our bank accounts are inflated by a factor of
> 10.  Can I just go back to January 1, 2018 and enter a fresh Opening
> Balance
> that matches our printed statements?  Or is there another way to reset
> balances without reinstalling and starting from scratch?
>

I would suggest that maybe you might consider EITHER

1) Create two sets of books, one with your "archived" data (that you never
again update) and one with your "current" data, OR

2) Create fresh accounts in your existing books, using "current" and
"archived" names or account headings, similar to the method shown in the
example above.

I presume after you become more experienced with GnuCash you might either
start over yet again OR merge the current and archived data as you desire.

NOTE that at this time I believe there's no built-in method to merge data
between separate books. So consider carefully how you might want to search
for old transactions. You gain some flexibility having them all in one
file, at the possible cost of having more "junk" you don't want to see
while you're learning.


I also suggest that if you haven't yet filed your taxes for the past tax
year you probably want your current book to include transactions back to
the end of the PREVIOUS tax year, at least until after you file your taxes.
So for example you might pull all your statements and get your books
reconciled back to January 1, 2017. That way you can create similar reports
in GnuCash and Quicken so you can more quickly become accustomed to the
process.


When I started using GnuCash many years ago, I had Quicken transactions
dating the 1980s through the late 1990s, and at some point I decided the
very oldest transactions and closed accounts were confusing after GnuCash
imported them, and I didn't want to bother fixing them all the way back to
the beginning.

SO from Quicken I exported all transactions into one file and set it aside.
I also exported just the past few years' transactions from just the current
accounts. SO if I need to find a particular transaction from the oldest
files (which comes up extremely rarely), I use a text editor to search for
the strings in the old archived QIF file, and I can determine the date, the
vendor, or whatever. I decided not to bother having an "archived" view of
the old transactions in GnuCash, but that's still an option if I ever need
it.

If I need to see old Quicken reports, I go back to archived copies because
I have no way to run old Quicken reports anymore. For those oldest
transactions, the reports are printed on paper, but sometime after 2000 I
started archiving pdf versions of all the reports I send to my accountants.


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