[GNC] Reconciliation

[David Cousens]

Jack, David

I haven't had to do this for quite a while but to do it you need the
complete set of contiguous statements. For the purposes of description lets
assume my last reconciled statement was to the 20/06/2019 and I am
reconciling the period 21/06/2019 until 20/07/2019 ( date format
dd-mm-yyyy).  One of the major difficulties in discussing this is we need to
be very clear whether we are referring to the opening and closing balances 
as reported by the staement and the opening balance (Starting Balance)
calculated by Gnucash and the Reconciled Balance which is the Starting
Balance +- the entries which have been checked  in the Debit and Credit
panes in the reconcile window.

Gnucash calculates the reconciled Starting Balance for the account by
summing forward all splits to the account you are reconciling which are
marked as reconciled ('y') since you created the account and started posting
transactions to it.  

If your reconciliation to 20/06/2019 was correct, all the splits to the
reconciled account up to and including should be marked 'y' and the figure
reported as the Starting Balance in the opening dialog of the reconciliation
procedure should be the closing balance of the statement ending on the
20/06/2019. No transactions recorded after 20/06/2019 should be marked as
'y', they should be either 'n' or 'c'.

If this is not the case, then there is a problem with the reconciliation
before 20/06/2019. What can happen to put the reconcile Starting Balance  in
GnuCash out compared to the Closing Balance from the statement at
20/06/2019? 

Either 
1) a transaction prior to 20/06/2019 which was previously marked reconciled
has been unmarked; or
2) a transaction prior to 20/06 2019 has been deleted;
3) a transaction prior to 20/06/2019 has been added and somehow marked as
reconciled('y').

You can only set the reconciliation flag in the reconciliation process (but
you can unset it by editing the split in the register tab)  and an added
transaction which is not marked as reconciled will not be included in the
reconcile Starting Balance total. 

It will still change the account balance but not the reconciled account
balance and it will appear at the top of the Credits pane (Accounting labels
in use) in the reconcile window and will not have the R checkbox checked.

If I were to check it and then complete the rest of the reconcile process (I
would have to omit reconciling another transaction for the same amount in
the period 21/06/2019 20/07/2019 and/or add a balancing transaction (Balance
button in the toolbar) to actually achieve this, I could create a situation
where the statementstarting balance at 20/06/2019 is different from the
Starting Balance the reconcile process calculates at 20/06/2019. Having
reconciled to 20/07/2019 to see this balance in the reconcile information
window I would have to unreconcile the transactions between 21/06/2019 and
20/07/2019 as otherwise they will be included in the reconcile Starting
Balance calculation. If we do this  now the statement starting balance for
21/06/2019-20/07/2019 and the reconcile Starting Balance will now differ by
the amount of this transaction.

If you are going to check the previously reconciled account value in this
case the value at 20/06/2019 you would need to mark any transaction splits
between 20/05/2019 and 20/06/2019 as unreconciled and then perform the
reconciliation for 21/05/2019 to 20/06/2019 entering the statement Closing
Balance at the 20/06/2019 as the Ending Balance. If its reconcile window
Starting balance agrees with the statement opening balance for 21/05/2019 to
20/06/2019 then you are good at 21/05/2019 and you can just reconcile
forward.  If not then the error lies before 21/05/2019 and you need to
unreconcile back to 20/04/2019 and repeat the check and so forth until you
eventually find the offending transaction.

My apologies for being long winded and pedantic. The above is my method of
last resort. I usually carry out a scan of the transactions in the register
previously reconciled looking for any unreconciled splits and check for any
wierd dates (I once managed to create an entry for 2005 when my Gnucash
records were only for 2009 forward with a mistype and hitting Enter before
checking also mm-dd-yyy and dd-mm-yyy swaps can occur even with imported
transactions). I have also resorted to reconciling other accounts which have
transactions into the account i have problems with. Of course it only works
where you can get statements for the other accounts and is not guaranteed to
find anything.

I also never use GnuCash's automatic selection of transaction splits to mark
them as reconciled. I uncheck all checked debits and credits (click in the
pane and then Ctrl_A to select all and then the Unreconcile Selection button
in the toolbar) in the reconcile window before starting and manually check
them off against the statement individually. I'm an accountant by training
and pedantic by nature and my purpose in doing a reconciliation is to make
sure the recorded transactions are correct. Likewise I never use the Balance
button to fix a problem with the recorded transactions. My only use of it is
to give me a numeric value to go looking for. I fix the the records. Fudging
it will eventually come back to bite you.

I think Stephen Butler alluded to individual problems we may have with
number reversals and similar problems earlier. I quite often swap characters
in words when typing and similarly numbers so 34 might come out as 43.

Unfortunately with reconciliation there are no or very few shortcuts. The
previous reconciliation has to be completely correct for the current one to
have a chance of being correct. 

David Cousens



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David Cousens
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