I think it is worth putting a procedure to reconcile 'backwards' on the Gnucash WIKI. Users who want to fill in old history in some accounts would benefit. I think your method would also be useful any time a historical transaction has been accidentally unreconciled, perhaps even when reconciling a different account in a split transaction.
I know that it is tricky, especially since the GnuCash reconciliation process has not been designed to lend itself to do that. I have personally developed a method to import old transactions into accounts and reconcile them when having a starting balance as recent as last year but I want earlier history to be able to produce comparison reports in a common format. I am confident that this can be done without needing to repeat every reconcile in chronological order, so I would love to see your method. On Wed, Nov 4, 2020 at 1:21 AM Jim DeLaHunt <list+gnuc...@jdlh.com> wrote: > Hello, Gnucash users: > > Would anyone else like a hacky way to do partial and catch-up > reconciliation of bank accounts and credit card accounts? > > I am a bad bookkeeper. In my personal finances, I have several GnuCash > accounts with 10-15 years of transaction history, but I did not > reconcile them properly against my statements for all those years. > Recently, I have been doing better. I looked for a way to reconcile just > this year's transactions for now. Then I want to reconcile new > statements as they arrive, and work on reconciling last year's > statements as i have time. Gradually I want to work backwards in time to > reconcile and correct as much of the history as I can. This will let me > do better budgeting etc. > > Unfortunately, reconciliation in GnuCash is set up to start from the > beginning of a book account, and to work forward. In fact, the GnuCash > Guide, 2.9.4. *Reconciliation* > < > https://lists.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_txns.html#txns-reconcile1>, > > says: "Warning. It is important to understand that reconciliation is > done for a given date, and when you reconcile an account based on a > statement from a given date, you are reconciling all transactions prior > to that date. Therefore, if you add or modify transactions that predate > your last reconciliation, your reconciled balances will be thrown off." > > But I think I have found a way to do catch-up reconciliation, starting > with the recent past and working backwards. It's a hacky, unconventional > approach. It involves adding 3 transactions to adjust balances and net > out errors in the un-reconciled past. I wrote down my procedure, and the > instructions are about 4,000 words. But it works. > > Is there much interest in my sharing this approach? If there is, I > might put my instructions on to a wiki page. If not, I'll just publish > it on my blog or something. > > For those of you whose books are up-to-date and fully reconciled, I > admire you. Best regards, > —Jim DeLaHunt, software engineer, Vancouver, Canada > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > -- David Carlson _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.