What is the practical purpose of reconciling in GNUCash?

[Buddha Buck]

>
> > (Reconciling the expense account *will* interfere, but as others have
> said,
> > there's no reason to do that.)
>
> At some point in the past, someone noted a situation in which one might
> reconcile an expense account when one was in the habit of filing expense
> reports for reimbursement. One could use the reconcile feature to track the
> staus of the reimbursement process (or something like that). I never did it
> myself, though.
>

I would argue that for reimbursable expenses, you shouldn't use an expense
account, but rather an asset account. After all, if I buy a plane ticket to
a conference with the expectation that I'll be reimbursed by my employer,
then it's not my expense, it's my employer, and I am loaning them the cost
of the plane ticket until I am reimbursed. A short-term loan is an asset,
not an expense.

But I could see, if you are doing business with a particular vendor enough
that they send you periodic statements, reconciling your books against
their statements to make sure that you are accounting for everything.

But even there, it would be an odd account. Certainly not a case where you
would want to later reorganize your account structure.