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? David T. On Dec 8, 2025, 8:17 AM, at 8:17 AM, Richard Fochtmann via gnucash-user <[email protected]> wrote: > _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
