[GNC] Would anyone else like a hacky way to do partial and catch-up reconciliation?

[Greg Feneis]

Also not a good bookkeeper similarly and also interested.




Kind regards,

Greg Feneis




On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 7:13 AM David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I think it is worth putting a procedure to reconcile 'backwards' on the
> Gnucash WIKI.  Users who want to fill in old history in some accounts would
> benefit.  I think your method would also be useful any time a historical
> transaction has been accidentally unreconciled, perhaps even when
> reconciling a different account in a split transaction.
>
> I know that it is tricky, especially since the GnuCash reconciliation
> process has not been designed to lend itself to do that.
>
> I have personally developed a method to import old transactions into
> accounts and reconcile them when having a starting balance as recent as
> last year but I want earlier history  to be able to produce comparison
> reports in a common format.  I am confident that this can be done without
> needing to repeat every reconcile in chronological order, so I would love
> to see your method.
>
> On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 1:21 AM Jim DeLaHunt <list+gnucash at jdlh.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello, Gnucash users:
> >
> > Would anyone else like a hacky way to do partial and catch-up
> > reconciliation of bank accounts and credit card accounts?
> >
> > I am a bad bookkeeper. In my personal finances, I have several GnuCash
> > accounts with 10-15 years of transaction history, but I did not
> > reconcile them properly against my statements for all those years.
> > Recently, I have been doing better. I looked for a way to reconcile just
> > this year's transactions for now. Then I want to reconcile new
> > statements as they arrive, and work on reconciling last year's
> > statements as i have time. Gradually I want to work backwards in time to
> > reconcile and correct as much of the history as I can. This will let me
> > do better budgeting etc.
> >
> > Unfortunately, reconciliation in GnuCash is set up to start from the
> > beginning of a book account, and to work forward. In fact, the GnuCash
> > Guide, 2.9.4. *Reconciliation*
> > <
> >
> https://lists.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_txns.html#txns-reconcile1
> >,
> >
> > says: "Warning. It is important to understand that reconciliation is
> > done for a given date, and when you reconcile an account based on a
> > statement from a given date, you are reconciling all transactions prior
> > to that date. Therefore, if you add or modify transactions that predate
> > your last reconciliation, your reconciled balances will be thrown off."
> >
> > But I think I have found a way to do catch-up reconciliation, starting
> > with the recent past and working backwards. It's a hacky, unconventional
> > approach. It involves adding 3 transactions to adjust balances and net
> > out errors in the un-reconciled past. I wrote down my procedure, and the
> > instructions are about 4,000 words. But it works.
> >
> > Is there much interest in my sharing this approach?  If there is, I
> > might put my instructions on to a wiki page. If not, I'll just publish
> > it on my blog or something.
> >
> > For those of you whose books are up-to-date and fully reconciled, I
> > admire you. Best regards,
> >        —Jim DeLaHunt, software engineer, Vancouver, Canada
> >
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>
> --
> David Carlson
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