Kevin,
We cannot really tell whether it is correct to remove the transactions to the
Imbalance account or not. You can really only determine that by examining the
register of the account to which you think you should perhaps change the split
to the imbalance account. Before actually changing it check in that register for
that account and check if it would duplicate a transaction already present. If
so then it would likely be safe to delete. If not and you are reasonably sure it
is the right account you would change it and assign the Imbalance account entry
to it.
Any transactions to Equity:Opening Balance accounts should be at or near the
date you first created the books and there should be an entry in Equity:Opening
Balances for each Asset or Liability account which existed at that date.
Ultimately your check on all of this will be when you run a reconciliations of
the credit card account(s) and your bank accounts against the statements
provided by the bank. This should detect if you have incorrectly assigned one
end of a transaction to an asset or liability account. It is generally not
possible to reconcile Equity ,Income and Expense accounts as there are no
external statements to reconcile them against.
David Cousens
On Mon, 2022-06-20 at 22:30 +, Kevin T via gnucash-user wrote:
> Sorry to have created such a row.
> Yes, clicking the split does indeed show me more information and is helpful to
> a point.
> I have made many blunders during this process that I am likely to pay for in
> time. I paid little attention to the import account as I figured I would
> properly assign them at a later time. Yes, I had used quicken many years ago,
> sorry.
> I appreciate the information all of you have provided.
> I have read some more about double entry accounting. Again thanks.
> That said, I have 3 cases in the Imbalance account. All are discussed with
> the split line showing. I hope that you can see the screen shots included.
> a) ones which are truly involving only one account.
> these I am assuming they are safe to remove as no other accounts are effected.
>
> ..b) one in which the transaction is showing two accounts and one of them
> is the imbalance account and one other 'proper' account.
>
> The above is a credit card transaction. In the double entry world, and if
> this were a a perfect world, the imbalance would be a different asset
> account. In the real world, the asset account, not shown, does cover this
> transaction but is done in a single transfer of funds to the source CC
> account.
> I have reconciled all the CC card accounts. If done properly, should the
> imbalance account be the source CC account?
> If I look at the CC accounts that I have made all the corrections, or imported
> more correctly, the transactions contain appropriate double entries, as below.
>
> I think that these types of entries are also left over from imports not used
> or repeated. They are almost all involving CC imports. It would seem that
> these are also OK to remove. They are double, and at times tripling, the
> expense account entries and values...c) this one involves opening
> balances.
>
> what should a opening balance be offset with ? To me, this is a magical
> entry, and its source, whether credit or debit, is of no importance. There
> is only one Opening balance account in the equity group. In am starting in
> the middle of the year and the accounts have existed for a while there are
> opening balances for all Equities, Liabilities, and Assets. Should there be
> others ?.
> My background is engineering, the transfer of electrons is well understood.
> Accounting, and its nuances, are not.
> Again, thanks for all of your insight.
> Kevin
>
> On Saturday, June 18, 2022, 05:29:56 PM CDT, David T. > wrote:
>
> The confusion arises when you use "entry" for both splits and transactions in
> the same paragraph, as you did here.
>
> On June 18, 2022 4:57:57 PM EDT, Gyle McCollam wrote:
> When I say entry, I refer to the entire transaction, but I get your point.
>
>
> Sent from Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
>
>
> Original message From: "David T." Date:
> 6/18/22 4:24 PM (GMT-05:00) To: gnucash-user@gnucash.org, Gyle McCollam <
> gmccol...@live.com>, David Carlson , Kevin T <
> neviki...@yahoo.com>Cc: gnucash-user@gnucash.org Subject: Re: [GNC] rookie
> question Imbalance-USD
> Gyle,
>
> Whether you delete the imbalance account or not once it is empty is a user
> preference. Some dislike seeing the imbalance account in their books, and
> delete it if it is empty. Others (like myself and you) leave that account in
> place. I leave it because it just reappears again later anyways when you miss
> an entry.
>
> Also, I'll note that you made a misleading statement late in the first
> paragraph when you said that "If he deletes the entry, he will delete it from
> the other accounts as well." In this instance, I think you meant to say "If
