Real-world problem: I have an old credit card account whose balance is wrong (should be zero), and there’s no way without many hours figuring out where in past years it got off. Trying to figure out the cleanest way to correct this.
I can`t fill envelopes because that amount has to go into an envelope, which will then be wrong.
If I delete the account, will that affect my envelopes or Unallocated amount? If so, what else can I do? Am I doomed for this to be wrong for all of eternity?
I think you’ll be ok before eternity comes 
If your monthly reports aren’t terribly important, or if you can ignore one month’s data, then what I’d do is enter an Income transaction for the incorrect balance directly to the card account. That will leave your bank account(s) at their accurate totals, and your credit card at Zero where it should be. Your income/expenditure reports will be off because of the fake money, so if that’s a concern you may need another solution, but if that’s not a big part of your budgeting this will make your totals correct.
If you DO use your monthly in/out reports I’ll try to think of another solution that works.
Hope that helps!
Hi there! Thanks for posting! Another thing you can try that might be cleaner is to manually adjust the account balance to zero rather than adding in a fake income.
You can manually adjust your account balance on the website by clicking on Add/Edit on the Accounts tab. From there, update your Balance and save your changes when you’re done.
Hope that helps!
Karisa, I did this. It moved the incorrect balance to Unallocated. So, now I can create a fake “correction” income and put it in Unallocated to zero that out.
Thanks, Alan
No, actually that’s worse. When filling envelopes and putting the “correction” into Unallocated, I have to designate an Account. This makes the Account budget wrong.
Going back to Tiffany’s suggestion with a twist, I created a bogus envelope. I added a bogus transaction for the off account and bogus envelope… a little messy, but problem solved!
I think Karisa is suggesting you manually adjust the starting balance when the account was created by the amount it’s off today. That’s actually a more elegant solution than mine, and won’t negatively affect any of your reports or your Unallocated balance.
When I go to Accounts and Edit, it shows the current balance, not the starting balance. Searching through Transactions doesnt turn it up, either. I know that Ive seen this somewhere…
I think I cannot see a “Created” transaction because this account goes back to 2018. I assume that there is no way to view the starting balance. Is that correct?
When I view transactions, View All, and search for “created,” I can see when some accounts were created (with starting balance), even older ones, but not when others are created.
If you don’t have a “created” transaction, you may have to just keep hitting “view more” until you get to the beginning of the account. There should be a starting balance there that you can adjust by the amount it’s off, but that may still affect your Unallocated funds (although it would seem that that’s an appropriate adjustment, no?)