While "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." is correct, the Banks
(and by their proxy their Information Systems) have stepped up and have
gotten to the point where their online portals (that is if you have signed
up for it) have very good filtering capabilities when it comes to displaying
transactions by date range. In the US the Banks are required to keep 7 years
of statement available, and most banks now do very good job to getting them
to you at a moment's notice.
Here is what I do that has worked well for me:
If there were any unintended entries gotten added after reconcile ('y' or
'c') then they normally appear as unreconciled ('n') which you can filter by
that status in the register (assuming that you normally reconcile accounts
like Bank, Credit Card and/or Investment accounts). This is likely to be
able to flag it down very quickly. If your last reconciled register suddenly
appears out-of-sync with respect to bank statement then review previous
statement(s). Check the beginning and ending balance of previous statements
and if they do not match then go back one more statement and compare. Rinse
and repeat until you get to the statement that actually matches. Your
culprit is likely to be somewhere in the statement following the one that
matches. Use the previous step of transaction status to locate the errant
entry and then correct as necessary.
-----Original Message-----
From: john <jra...@ceridwen.us>
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2023 3:55 PM
To: Mahon Finbar <mahon.fin...@neuf.fr>
Cc: Gnucash Users <gnucash-user@gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] Reconciliation with a strange opening balance
> 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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