missing documentation

[Tim Wunder]

On Friday 04 January 2008 11:23:21 pm Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-01-04 at 23:13 -0500, Tim Wunder wrote:
> > I used to save my credit card receipts and enter them manually. Now I
> > import them. Much easier to download transactions than to key them in
> > every week (or so). As a result, I stay more current and gnucash's
> > balance matches the credit card balance better.
>
> I track all my expenses, including cash, so I've already taken that time
> hit.  The cost of the smaller number of bank transactions is no hassle
> at that point.
>

Good for you. I wasn't being that diligent. I'd save my receipts, but the time 
delay to getting them entered into gnucash resulted in me spending time 
catching up at the end of the month. 

> > The transaction import marks the transactions as cleared. Then I'll use
> > the reconciliation process to make sure transactions weren't missed in
> > the downloads, which has happened once or twice over the span of several
> > months.
>
> But a big part of the reason behind reconciliation is to catch errors or
> fraud.
>
> If someone steals your card and charges gas, you'll never notice it--or
> only because you rely on your memory and not the accounting system.
>

I disagree. If I download my transactions on my credit card weekly and look at 
the transactions there, I'm much more able to spot fraud than by waiting for 
my paper statement and reconciling. It may be true that I should save my 
receipts anyway and reconcile them against the download, but I'm not that 
diligent.

You asked why direct connect would be used. I answered with my use case. If 
that doesn't suit you, so be it. It /helps/ me keep a better eye on my credit 
card than keying in paper receipts did. 

Tim
-- 
Fedora Core release 6 (Zod), Linux 2.6.22.14-72.fc6
KDE: 3.5.8-1 Fedora
 23:30:01 up 11 days,  9:27,  2 users,  load average: 0.26, 0.18, 0.10
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts" John Wooden
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