[GNC] Reconcile transactions dated before start of accounts

[David Cousens]

David,

The problem is the opening balance you have used, presumably from your previous
set of books closing balance, includes the two transactions at a date before the
reconciliation on 1/3/2022 but the balance in the bank statement does not. These
transactions would have been unreconciled in your previous books to 1/3/2022
although they will appear in the closing balance. 

You can simply add the transactions in your current set of books and note that
they are carried forward from the previous books and adjust the Opening Balance
to the reconciled balance to 1/3/2022 of your previous set of books (presuming
you used the closing balance at 1/3/2022 when you opened the current set of
books and not the reconciled balance in them at 1/3/2022 as your opening
balance) to reflect the reconciled balance in the account at 1/3/2022.

 Notate accordingly in the opening balance transaction so it is clear at some
time in the future should you or your accountant have to make sense of it.

Banks record an event at a time that is relevant to their accounts, most likely
when the funds are cleared not necessarily at the time, e.g. when you have
committed to a purchase or sale, that the  event, which gives rise to the event
in the bank's account, is relevant to your accounts.

David Cousens

On Wed, 2022-12-07 at 22:33 +0000, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
> My company has been running 8 years or so. The financial year starts 1st
> March each year (1/3/2022 in DD/MM/YYYY format)
> 
> I wish to enter into GnuCash all the transactions for the current financial
> year onwards, so starting 1/3/2022 - I have no desire to enter all
> transactions from when the company first started trading.
> 
> The first transaction this year occurred on 1/3/2022  and showed up
> *immediately* in the bank statement. I reconciled the bank account on
> 1/3/2022,
> which with hindsight might not have been sensible.
> 
> However, the next couple of entries shown in the bank account occurred a
> day earlier on 28/2/2022, but didn’t show up in the bank account until
> 1/3/2022. This will make it impossible to get the amount of money in the
> bank account agree with the transactions in GbuCash, because two
> transactions from the previous financial year are not in the GnuCash
> records.
> 
> Is there any way around this problem? Should I just enter the two
> transactions from the previous financial year into GnuCash?
> 
> I know that my accountant will not be bothered either way.
> 
> Dave
>