[GNC] Reconciliation of accounts is not permanent

[Adrien Monteleone]

Unless you never enter a transaction after a reconciliation that is 
dated before that last closing date, *and* you never have any 
transactions that aren't reconciled at each and every reconciliation 
(that is, some that haven't cleared the institution yet, but are in your 
books) then you will likely never see the suggested Opening Balance 
match the presumed 'opening date' on the day you attempt reconciliation. 
(the 'opening date' is not shown or listed, as it isn't relevant, only 
the closing date is.)

For that matter, the account balance as of a closing date isn't likely 
to match the statement closing balance for reconciliation if any 
transactions haven't cleared yet.

The purpose of reconciliation is to verify that from the last closing 
date to the new closing date, the listed transactions cleared the 
account and thus explain the change from the opening balance (last 
closing balance) to the new closing balance listed on the statement.

The actual balance, in your books, on a given day, or as of a given day, 
is irrelevant to that reconciliation.

-----

Now, how are you *certain* that those reconciliations didn't happen and 
that there is no record of them?

Run a Reconciliation Report and select a desired account.

Set the date to say, 1/1/22 and the end date to 'today'.

Leave all other defaults.

You'll get a report showing transactions and their dates, sorted by 
Reconciled status with Reconciled first. (followed by Cleared and then 
Unreconciled)

Look that over carefully. If you have blocks of transactions with a 
reconciled date before they allegedly occurred in real life (the 
transaction date)—e.g, you had transactions from May '23, reconciled to 
perhaps May '22, then it is quite possible you had the wrong year on 
your closing date dialog when you thought you were performing the May 
'23 reconciliation.

If you know for a fact you did, say a May '23 reconciliation, and those 
transactions all show in either the Cleared or Unreconciled section of 
the report, then yeah, you have a problem.

But the fact that you have backup files also with no evidence of these 
reconciliations is extremely odd. (it isn't like GnuCash is going to 
edit or trash data in multiple files at one time)


Regards,
Adrien

On 9/26/23 11:05 AM, Mark Truelove wrote:
> Hi all, I just joined the list. I thought I'd give this a try before moving
> to a bug report, because I can't believe this happens to me and no one else
> has experienced it.  I did try searching list history as suggested with
> google, but didn't find anything referring to this specifically.
> 
> Also, this is not the first time experiencing this phenomenon, probably the
> third.
> 
> I use gnucash for personal finances, so I have a checking or cash account
> and a number of credit card accounts.  All of these are reconciled several
> times a year as I receive statements, although not always on time every
> month.  However I don't go three months without catching up on all my
> accounts in any case.
> 
> Today (and on previous occasions), I started my periodic reconciliations
> because I had statement notifications in email.  I opened my credit card to
> reconcile and had the month's statement in a browser window.  At first I
> was unable to match the "beginning of month" figures to fill out the small
> prompt window when reconciling.  After a few glances I realized that it was
> trying to match the beginning balance to September of LAST YEAR instead of
> last month.  I have reconciled this account to its statements 9 or10 times
> in the last year, including last month.
> 
> In previous months, I reconciled this account and saved it normally, and
> that information was retained for the following months' reconciliations.
> Now when it forgets, it is losing/ignoring several months of previous
> reconciliations, but not all of them (since this account is at least 20
> years old).  When I checked them all, it has forgotten reconciliation data
> for three other accounts as well (while another six accounts in the same
> file are fully up-to date).
> 
> I have backups of my files, both through GC's own backup system and my own
> rotating backups.  Loss of data files is not an issue here.  This got me
> thinking, and I went back and reloaded some of these backup files
> directly.  When loaded, they are all missing the same information as my
> current file.
> 
> So, one could say, user error - he actually didn't reconcile for months,
> and the files show that.  Unfortunately, I DID reconcile all of these
> accounts, and the program is treating some aspect of the data as if it
> doesn't exist beyond that point, regardless of the source file.
> 
> I'm a retired IT pro, an IT Manager and other roles over 40 years.  I know
> how this looks at first glance.  If this hadn't happened to me twice
> previously I wouldn't be taking the time to report this in detail today.
> 
> I'm currently running v5.3.  I downloaded 5.4 but haven't upgraded yet bc I
> didn't want to compound the problem.  If this is a known issue and 5.4
> fixes it, then great, I'll just upgrade.
> 
> I hope this scenario seems familiar to one of the users out there.