How do I deal with initial transactions from online banking

Question

I've just set up gnucash to pull transactions from one of my credit card accounts. It works and the transactions are imported; however, the account balance listed is wrong. I think this is because it could only get transactions from the last few months, so the starting balance was not zero, and it doesn't know that.

gnucash appears to notice the problem and wants to pull up a reconciliation window. I do not know what to do with that window and have only a vague idea of what it is. (I'm not really using the program for accounting; I just want a unified, local interface to my online banking account history without having to jump between five different web pages, all terrible).

I think I need to tell gnucash what the account starting balance "should have been", but I can't find an option for it. The reconciliation window has a "Add a new balancing entry to the account" button, but it seems to add a new dummy transaction to account for the difference, which I don't think is what I want.

Help?

Answer 1

You need to create (or use if it already exists), an Equity Account. Typically called Opening Balances.

Then make a transaction from the Credit Card Account into the Opening Balances account for the date that you want to start tracking from.

You can use the same Opening Balances account for any other accounts you have.

See Gnucash Docs for more info.