There is no reason to change the starting balance, as it does not have any actual effect on what the reconciliation process actually does.  I believe the starting balance is either the starting balance of the account if it has never been reconciled, or else the balance as of the previous reconciliation (which should be the balance by adding/subtracting all the transactions marked as reconciled.  

The only thing that is truly important is the ending balance, as the reconcile process will finish by changing all Cleared transactions to Reconciled, and record the date of the reconciliation.

If this is not explained well enough in the manual, I'm willing to take suggestions on changes or additions to improve the description.

As Jack explained this works as expected.

What about this situation:
Someone (me) has 7 years of downloaded transactions on their account ledger, none of it reconciled.  Suddenly they feel inspired (by kmymoney) to start reconciling the account and they try to reconcile the most recent month but the reconciliation doesn't come out right because the starting balance is not 0. How does this person start reconciling the account without going back 7 years?

(In reply to Swj from comment #3)
> What about this situation:
> Someone (me) has 7 years of downloaded transactions on their account ledger,
> none of it reconciled.  Suddenly they feel inspired (by kmymoney) to start
> reconciling the account and they try to reconcile the most recent month but
> the reconciliation doesn't come out right because the starting balance is
> not 0. How does this person start reconciling the account without going back
> 7 years?

I think you'll find that if you select all that account's transactions, up to the point at which you wish to commence reconciliation, and mark them all as cleared, then start reconciliation. Enter your statement, or today's, date and 'Next' through the pages.  You should end with a zero differece, so click finish.

If you are still having trouble, can you create a sample account with less data - perhaps just one transaction per month for five months.

Also to your comment 3 - I think the starting balance would be the starting balance of the account, not 0.  

Another variant on Allan's suggestion would be be to simply assume that everything older than a chosen date is correct, then: 1) mark all transactions on or prior to that date as cleared, 2) do a reconcile on that date with that date's balance as the ending balance.  It doesn't matter whether the starting balance is correct or not - the purpose is just to set a last reconciled data in the account, and then use that date and balance as the starting point for the next reconciliation.

Allan's suggestion of marking all prior transactions worked and I could finish the reconciliation with a difference of 0.  The only con's are that it is a little un-intuitive and it shows the prior transactions as reconciled when they weren't really.

(In reply to Swj from comment #6)
> Allan's suggestion of marking all prior transactions worked and I could
> finish the reconciliation with a difference of 0.  The only con's are that
> it is a little un-intuitive and it shows the prior transactions as
> reconciled when they weren't really.

On the other hand, would it be right to show the account as reconciled when, really, it would only be reconciled as from your intended date?

I see two choices - you could now set all the not really reconciled transactions as unmarked, which would leave the Last reconciled date showing.  Of course, next time you reconcile you'll have to repeat the process.  Secondly, start a new account with an appropriate name, and show the old account as having transferred the ending balance to the new account.  Then reconcile it, including  the opening balance.

Wouldn't it be less complex to allow the user to input a starting balance?

Probably not, especially as it would likely not follow sound accounting principles, which IS one of the things KMM does.  The various "workarounds" for reconciling an account which has never been reconciled are really just that.  A way for you to bring the account "up to date" so you can properly reconcile on a go-forward basis.  I think you are in effect, trying to reconcile the account for a period of time (such as the past month for example) without reconciling the account prior to that time.  If you are going to do that on a regular basis, why not just to it the slightly harder way once, and then future reconciliation becomes straghtforward.

That all said, I'd have to leave it to the developers to say whether it would actually be easy or not to implement, although I would continue to argue against it even if it were technically easy.

I agree with Jack's view on this.  While I'm in no way an accountant, or anything close to one, to me, the idea is to ensure the closing balance in the account matches that in the source institution.  If you 'invent' a starting balance, then anything following that is suspect.

Not a good idea in my view.