Irritating

[Neulinger, Nathan]

> > Well, that's your prerogative.  We can't keep you from shooting
> > yourself in the foot, or doing things the "wrong" way.  If it works
> > for you, that's fine.  But don't complain that there are 
> artifacts of
> > your incorrect usage.
> 
> I promise to never complain - scout's honor.
> 
> It's the "artifacts of your incorrect usage" that puzzles me. 
> What exactly do 
> you mean by this? What artifacts? The only artifact I can 
> possibly see, being 
> a complete novice at accounting, is that a transaction I 
> reconciled might not 
> be reconciled on the "official" statement. Is that what you 
> mean? Or is there 
> something "lurking" in gnucash that will possibly foul things up if I 
> continue reconciling from the online database? Since I find 
> it extremely 
> unlikely that the bank would (or could) let the online data 
> get out of synch 
> with their offline data, I don't understand this statement. 
> Is there some 
> inherent assumption in gnucash that reconciling should only 
> be done on a 
> strict schedule? or at a minimum of monthly? or something else? This 
> statement really puzzles me. Or is there something in 
> accounting principles 
> that will really foul things up by reconciling on a weekly basis? or 
> sometimes weekly and sometimes bi-weekly and not really on a 
> strict 30 day 
> rotation? or by having a somewhat random pattern to 
> reconciling instead of a 
> regular pattern? This puzzles me because I am concerned that 
> I am missing 
> something basic here. I do not mean this facetiously or 
> anything like that. I 
> would really like to know. I definitely do not want to shoot 
> myself in the 
> foot. Please educate me if you have the time to do so.

Considering that I do the same thing... usually at least once a week.
About the only time I really closely read the official statement is
reading the names/comments on the checks when my wife hasn't recorded
them correctly.

On more than one occasion, this has allowed me to catch a screwup one of
us made, and on another occasion alerted me to a fraudulent use of our
debit card (and that was a royal pain in the ass) a few weeks before we
would have seen it on the statement, if we would have noticed it at all.


-- Nathan