[GNC] Getting My Account To Trial Balance

[David Carlson]

I have no experience with release 3.2 or with High Sierra, so I hope others
can help Shug with reports.

As Adrien Monteleone and David T both point out, the Trial Balance report
may be of little or no value to users who only use one currency and do not
buy or sell stock or other commodities.  You could probably skip that
report altogether.

GnuCash forces every transaction to either be a perfectly balanced double
entry transaction in one currency or it automatically adds one of the two
accounts that Adrien Monteleone mentioned. When those are equal to zero,
your books are balanced

The Trial Balance report is for users with more complex needs.

David C.

On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 6:05 PM, Adrien Monteleone <
adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:

> I get that same error. (MacOS High Sierra, GnuCash 3.2)
>
> My suspicion is misconfigured report options, but I’m not familiar with
> the report enough to know which one(s). I never bother with this report
> because I don’t use the Close Books function. I also don’t really
> understand it’s purpose with a perpetual system in light of the existence
> of the orphan-xxx and imbalance-xxx accounts. If those are both zero, how
> does one still need to adjust anything before closing books?
>
> Regards,
> Adrien
>
> > On Jul 25, 2018, at 5:49 PM, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > That is a bird of a different feather.  Then it will help to know which
> > release you are using and what operating system your computer has,
> because
> > the solution may be to switch to a different release or to try some more
> > complex debugging if you are up to it.
> >
> > Do include gnucash-user at gnucash.org in every reply so other users see
> the
> > comments.
> >
> > David C
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 3:13 PM, H M MacDonald OBE <
> sassunachobe at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Hi David/Richard
> >>
> >> The error message is as follows:
> >>
> >> *Report error*
> >>
> >> *An error occurred while running the report.*
> >>
> >> It doesn’t give any clue as to what’s wrong.
> >>
> >> Thanks.
> >>
> >> Shug
> >>
> >> From: D <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>
> >> Date: Wednesday, 25 July 2018 at 20:33
> >> To: David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>, Hugh MacDonald OBE <
> >> spahonsecobe at gmail.com>
> >> Cc: Gnucash Users <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> >> Subject: Re: [GNC] GETTING MY ACCOUNT TO TRIAL BALANCE
> >>
> >> Shug,
> >>
> >> I would ask you to tell us what error message you have received, since I
> >> don't usually see any error messages when I run this report. (I do have
> >> trouble getting this report to balance, however).
> >>
> >> However, David has made useful advice regarding tracking transaction
> gain
> >> or loss; I would add that in Gnucash, a commodity is a broadly defined
> >> concept, and covers anything you have that is not counted in your
> default
> >> currency.
> >>
> >> In other words, stocks, mutual funds, as well as accounts denominated in
> >> another currency will all fall into this category, and any time you
> have a
> >> transaction involving thread accounts, you will need to account for
> gain or
> >> loss hidden in the conversion.
> >>
> >> David T
> >>
> >> On July 25, 2018, at 1:52 PM, David Carlson <
> david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> I assume that you mean the debits do not equal the credits rather than
> that
> >> GnuCash failed to generate the report.
> >>
> >> This is commonly the result of selling a commodity for a different price
> >> than what was originally paid without correctly accounting for the
> profit
> >> or loss.  One technique to close in on a transaction contributing to the
> >> difference is to include a shorter time period in the report until the
> >> values do balance.  Once the date is determined, look for a commodity
> >> transaction that is not balanced by a profit or loss.
> >>
> >> David C
> >>
> >> On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 12:20 PM, H Millar MacDonald OBE <
> >> spahonsecobe at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi
> >>
> >> I¹ve just become involved with GnuCash 3.2 and set up my first accounts
> for
> >> our club.   It all looks okay except  and will provide a profit and loss
> >> report on Income and Expenditure  which is good.  However, when I try to
> >> get
> >> a Trial Balance I get an error message which according to Google seems
> to
> >> be
> >> quite common.  I don¹t know where to start to fix this.  Can anyone
> offer
> >> any advice please?  I am an absolute novice at all of this so please be
> >> patient with my request.
> >>
> >> Many thanks.
> >>
> >> Shug
> >>
> >>
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