[GNC] Incorrect Starting Balance in Reconcile Popup

[sunfish62 at yahoo.com]

Adrien previously made valid points-- to wit, you should not consider adding a balancing entry to be correct. I echo his advice for you to go back to a point before your first balancing entry and get this in order. 

Your terse reply makes informed advice difficult,* but it suggests that the current bank statement is 9880 and the reconciliation dialog prepopulates with 12457, which you accept and then proceed to the reconciliation window. This would be my first point: you need to change 12457 to 9880--after all, you're reconciling to your *bank's* records. GnuCash makes an educated guess as to what the closing figure should be, based on dates and reconcile flags-- but it's only a guess. 

You should at least go back first and correct your books from the beginning, and we what happens when reconcile to the bank's numbers. 

⁣David T. ​

* MY terse reply could simply have been 9880<>12457 and left it at that!


On Dec 8, 2025, 3:50 PM, at 3:50 PM, Richard Fochtmann <rfochtmann at gmx.com> wrote:
>Under normal circumstances, users can disregard the starting balance in
>
>reconciliation, so long as the ending balances match.  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>With GnuCash, the starting balance in reconciliation is a calculation
>of 
>*all* reconciled transactions in the account-- past, present and
>future-- 
>so if you have any reconciled transactions that come after the starting
>
>date of your reconciliation, they will throw off the starting balance.
>What 
>matters is that the closing balances match.  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>My general suggestion for anyone trying to reconciled a long period of 
>time, or to correct an error in the past (reconciled) books, is first
>to 
>try reconciling the entire period to the last date available, selecting
>
>everything that either appears on the last statement or predates it. If
>
>that works, then your cleanup is done. If it doesn't, then cancel out, 
>clear all reconcile transactions after the last good reconciliation,
>and 
>work through statement by statement. 
>  
>  
>  
>  
>However, your comments that this has happened before and that you've
>had 
>to create balancing entries suggests a problem with either your data or
>
>your procedures. Perhaps you could provide more detail?