> On Nov 13, 2023, at 07:20, Mahon Finbar via gnucash-user
> <gnucash-user@gnucash.org> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> The recent discussion on reconciliation was helpful in trying to sort out
> some anomalies I have.
>
> When I do the latest reconciliation of one of my accounts the opening balance
> is 10,448.43 and gives me an amount of inbalance which is way off.
>
> Following the advice in the recent posts I tried working backwards to see if
> I could find any errors.
>
> I got close to 0.00 from time to time and was satisfied enough to consider a
> balancing entry, but was intrigued on where the 'error' might have been.
>
> I set off to see where, but, in the course of my search, I tried to find the
> number 10,443.43 in the account, as a baseline, but didn't find one.
>
> If I understand the process of reconciliation the number should be somewhere
> in the account, should it not??
>
> Just tell me I am barking up the wrong tree, if I am making an error.
The reconcile info dialog that comes up when you click the reconcile button has
two balances: Starting balance and Ending balance. The first is the reconciled
balance for the account, that is the sum of all of the splits in the account
marked as reconciled. That's different from the opening balance, which is the
amount in the account when you created it in GnuCash. The starting balance
should match the starting balance on your statement. If it doesn't then there's
a mistake in reconciling a previous statement and you need to either make a
correcting entry in your account to get it to match or dig through previous
statements to try to find the discrepancy. The Ending balance is what you
should enter from your account statement or your bank's website. It defaults to
the balance of the last transaction on the date you entered in the
Reconciliation date entry.
When you finish that dialog the reconcile window opens and in the lower left it
shows the balances from the info window followed by Reconciled balance and
Difference, which update as you tick off transactions in the two panes of the
window; you should tick off the transactions that match your statement, paying
close attention to the amounts: Reconciliation is all about making sure that
there aren't any differences. Fix any differences in the register and press
enter to commit the change and it will be immediately reflected in the
reconcile window. Once you have marked all of the transactions the Ending and
Reconciled balances should match, Difference should be 0, and the Finish button
in the toolbar should be enabled.
You might not have a transaction balance matching the reconciled balance if you
have unbalanced transactions previous to the last reconciled one. The "R"
column between Transfer Account and Debit/Deposit shows each transaction's
reconciled status: y for reconciled, n for unreconciled, c for cleared, and v
for voided. You can use the the Status page of View>Filter By... to hide
transactions by status.
Finding reconciliation discrepancies from previous statements can be extremely
tedious and GnuCash doesn't have any tools to help. There's not even a way to
display historical reconciled balances.
When it comes to fixing discrepancies remember that banks can make errors too,
but you need documentation and time to get the bank to make corrections. It's
up to you to decide whether to pursue getting the bank to fix their mistake or
to take the hit and adjust your accounts to match the bank's.
Regards,
John Ralls
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