After being a participant in this list for several days, and being very
impressed with the quality of the discussions, I'm making some observations and
drawing some conclusions.
Many of the participants are users and ex-users of Quicken (which *is not* true
double-entry accounting software), rather than QuickBooks and similar (which
are true double-entry accounting software, as is GnuCash as well). There are
major differences in the *very concepts* of these two groups of software.
Opening balance of an account: This cannot be properly achieved by simply
adding a record that pre-dates the actual transaction records (or by using the
actual first transaction record). One *must use* the opening balance field of
the "create new account" dialogue, *which is immutable*, and among other things
(if done to all balance-bearing accounts), will result in a correct *opening
equity* (assets minus liabilities) of the whole "set of books". These
immutable (and reconciled) opening balances also form the correct basis for
subsequent reconciliations.
Reconciliation: The *only* purpose of account reconciliation is to confirm (or
achieve) that an account balance in the books agrees with the account balance
at the bank. ("Only", but it is absolutely essential.) Reconciliation does
not, in any other way, affect the integrity of equity, assets, liabilities, etc.
Hmmm, I thought I had more observations, but I'll have to re-gather my thoughts
first.
Hartmut W Sager
On Mon 02 Mar 2026 at 19:18:00 -06:00, Paul Kroitor <[email protected]> wrote:
> Although I consider myself quite experienced in both Gnucash (8+ years)
> and Quicken (25+ years), I find myself somewhat baffled by this thread.
> Perhaps senility has arrived.
>
> Firstly, just in case I've got totally the wrong end of the stick, we
> are talking about the "Opening Balance" transaction that's (generally)
> the first transaction in any asset or liability account, right? I
> thought maybe you were somehow talking about the beginning balance of a
> recon process, but that's quite sensibly called "Starting Balance" to
> avoid confusion.
>
> My bafflement stems from the fact that I've never considered an opening
> balance line (in either package) to be anything special at all (although
> Quicken confusingly pretends to book it back against the same account,
> Gnucash normally puts the other side against Equity, where it belongs).
> It's just basic transaction at the top of a ledger to move the sum of
> everything that happened before into Equity.
>
> But in Gnucash, isn't it simply a transaction like any other? Some of
> the dialogs / wizards may helpfully create it for you, but once it's
> there, I've always thought of it as mutable in any way you like: change
> the description, move it to later in the register, or change the amounts
> and it all works. So if you don't like the opening balance it created,
> just change it. Or delete it and add a new one!
>
> Of course, this assumes one knows what the balance should be at the time
> the books commence.
>
> Or am I missing something? Is there some special or magic processing of
> opening balance transactions I've never appreciated?
>
> Paul
>
>
> On 2026-03-02 7:34 p.m., Byron Bray wrote:
> > David,
> >
> > Thanks for pointing that out; I should have been more specific. I had noted
> > that GnuCash does allow entry of an opening balance, when creating an
> > account; as you suggest, though, GnuCash creates the account during import
> > and, apparently, derives the opening balance as David T. points out, by
> > summing the import’s reconciled transactions. It does not provide, as far
> > as I have been able to see, any mechanism for adjusting or setting the
> > opening balance in that situation.
> >
> > I am going to try un-reconciling the account in Quicken, exporting it,
> > importing it into GnuCash and recycling to see how will work.
> >
> > Thanks again,
> >
> > - Byron
> >
> >> On Mar 2, 2026, at 1:01 PM, David Cousens <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> You definitiely can enetr a starting balance for an account Using the
> >> New Account dialogue. It allows you to set the account paraeters an set
> >> an opening balance. I'm not sure but it may be that the QIF import
> >> creates accounts where necessary if they don't already exist in which
> >> case there is no mechanism to set the opening balance.
> >>
> >> The process of manually creating an opening balance is described in the
> >> giuide
> >> https://code.gnucash.org/website/docs/v1.8/C/gnucash-guide/txns_puttoget1.html
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, 2026-03-02 at 10:22 -0800, Byron Bray wrote:
> >>> First, my thanks to you both for your replies; I very much appreciate
> >>> your help.
> >>>
> >>> David Cousens wrote:
> >>>> If there are no transactions dated prior to the start date of the
> >>>> reconciliation other than your opening balance entry, then the
> >>>> starting
> >>>> balance when you reconcile the first month of entered data should
> >>>> be
> >>>> that opening balance.
> >>> Thanks for that tip. I checked the filter, making sure that ”Show
> >>> All” and all “Status" options were selected. I had performed the
> >>> export from Quicken with transactions starting on January 1st for the
> >>> year in question; double-checking showed that there were no prior
> >>> transactions. Nonetheless, the Reconcile Information window shows a
> >>> starting balance of almost $1,000.
> >>>
> >>> It seems so odd to me that you cannot simply enter an opening balance
> >>> for an account. Then all subsequent reconciliations could proceed
> >>> normally. I can see the logic behind the design; it was created on
> >>> the premise that the user would be starting at the beginning, with no
> >>> transactions and thus a zero balance. But that is not the case with
> >>> imported data.
> >>>
> >>> At present, I can see no way to arrive at an accurate opening balance
> >>> and reconciliation (and thus with accurate running balances, since a
> >>> “balancing transaction” unbalances the running balance for all
> >>> subsequent transactions) other than to go back to Quicken, un-
> >>> reconcile all the transactions in the account, export the account,
> >>> import it into GnuCash and, starting with an opening balance
> >>> transaction, reconcile them all. I have many accounts; this was just
> >>> the first, so it looks like a very long slog to make this transition.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> David T. wrote:
> >>>> One correction: the opening balance in the Reconcile window
> >>>> includes EVERY reconciled transaction in the register, regardless
> >>>> of transaction date.
> >>>
> >>> I observed and was puzzled by this. I was also puzzled by the fact
> >>> that the Reconcile window, when invoked for a particular month, shows
> >>> unreconciled transactions for all dates subsequent to the
> >>> reconciliation’s Beginning Date, including those after the Statement
> >>> Date. I had intended to ask, at some point, whether there was a way
> >>> to cause GnuCash to show only the transactions prior to the Statement
> >>> Date. Based upon your reply, I doubt it.
> >>>
> >>> I am no accountant and that behaviour seems strange to me. After all,
> >>> by definition, reconciliation takes place for a finite period; there
> >>> may be transactions which pre-date that period (e.g., a check written
> >>> months ago that has still not been cashed) but I can see no reason to
> >>> include transactions subsequent to the Statement Date since they, by
> >>> definition, have not occurred during that period.
> >>>
> >>> It also creates a real problem in a situation like mine. If the
> >>> opening balance is the sum of all reconciled transactions, the
> >>> discrepancy in these cases can only be found by going through months
> >>> or years of transactions trying to ferret out that transaction (or
> >>> combination of transactions) has caused it. Again, it points to the
> >>> idea of unreconciling all transactions in Quicken, exporting,
> >>> importing into GnuCash and reconciling.
> >>>
> >>> I had another question: I found that, in un-reconciling the
> >>> transactions for that month, I could not un-reconcile more than one
> >>> transaction at a time. The documentation, and many videos, etc.,
> >>> indicate that I should be able to Ctrl-click (Windows) or Cmd-click
> >>> (MacOS) multiple transactions in the register to create a selection
> >>> to perform operations on but I could not do so. I tried doing so on
> >>> both Basic Ledger and Transaction Journal views; nothing I have tried
> >>> has allowed me to select more than one record at a time. If the
> >>> Reconciliation window displayed both reconciled and unreconciled
> >>> transactions for the reconciliation period, I could use the
> >>> “Reconcile Selection” and “Unreconcile Selection” buttons to do this
> >>> but, as mentioned earlier, the window only displays any unreconciled
> >>> entries.What am I missing?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Again, thanks to you both.
> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >> --
> >> David Cousens
> > _______________________________________________
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