Transaction balancing

[Chris Morgan]

Oops, forgot to reply all to this one..

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: Transaction balancing
Date: Tuesday 21 January 2003 03:42 pm
From: Chris Morgan <cmorgan@alum.wpi.edu>
To: Benoit Grégoire <bock@step.polymtl.ca>

On Tuesday 21 January 2003 07:03 pm, Benoit Grégoire wrote:
> On January 21, 2003 05:20 pm, Chris Morgan wrote:
> > It does, my beef is mostly with balancing AFTER the importing.
> >  If I try to balance credit card debits and I have yet to
> > import my checking or savings account then why bother?  Thats
> > why it makes sense to have an autobalacing feature that you
> > can run at any time.
>
> No, it doesn't.  You are supposed to enter your transactions in one of two
> ways (assuming there is an import involved, with the ofx/hbci importer).
>
> 1-  You are a "Do everything daily" kind of guy.  So you write a GnuCash
> transactions everytime you write a check, spend money, etc.  Say you spend
> 40$ on your credit card at "Overpriced Restaurant".  When you come back or
> at the end of the week when you get rid of all the receipt in your wallet,
> you enter a 40$ transaction from "Credit Card" to "Expenses->Restaurant",
> or whatever.  At the end of the week, month, year or whenever, you download
> your credit card statement.  The importer will spot duplicates (with a
> confidence level) and by default mark them as cleared.  Transactions you
> forgot will proably not match, and the importer will have an inconclusive
> match or consider them as new and treat them like in the next case.
>
> 2-  You are an "Do everything at once kind of guy".   You don't write your
> transactions as they occur, instead you download your statement at the end
> of the month.  Now the importer should find that all transactions in your
> credit card are new (except maybe payments, if you imported your checking
> account prior to your credit card account).  The first time, all
> transactions will say "Need an account to Auto-Balance xxx$".  You pick an
> account for each one.  In the caase of the 40$ we talked about, you select
> "Expenses->Restaurant" (the importer already knows it's coming from "Credit
> Card").  Now the next month, you don't learn and go to  "Overpriced
> Restaurant" again.  Assuming your bank give you a minimum of info
> electronically, the importer will remember that a transaction at
> "Overpriced Restaurant" from account "Credit Card", goes to
> "Expenses->Restaurant".  All transactions are already cleared at this
> stage.
>
> In both scenarios, all transactions are balanced, in the exact same
> accounts, at creation time.

What happens if I import a years worth of transactions for credit
card/savings/checking one right after the other.  They are all interdependent
on each other for transactions, except for the credit card of course that may
go into other accounts.  How should I handle that?  How does msmoney handle
it?

Thanks,
Chris

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