[GNC-dev] Further feedback

[Stephen M. Butler]

On 2/6/19 6:40 AM, Christopher Lam wrote:
> On 5/2/19 2:37 am, Stephen M. Butler wrote:
>> Column recap:
>> Account -- account name as now shown.  Allow option to get the full name.
>> Reconcile-Dt -- Date of most recent reconciliation for the account. 
>> Most likely will be today or very recent.
>> Starting -- Sum of all reconciled transactions for this account prior to
>> Reconcile-Dt.  AKA -- Bank Starting Balance
>> Reconciled -- Sum of all reconciled transactions for this account on
>> Reconcile-Dt (only those transactions just reconciled).
>> Ending -- Sum of Starting and Reconciled -- AKA Bank Ending Balance.
>> Outstanding -- Sum of all non-reconciled transactions for this account
>> (include future dated transactions).
>> Balance -- Sum of Ending and Outstanding.  Should be the account balance
>> shown in the Accounts tab.
>
> Ok I can work with the following dates:
>
>   * Last-reconciled-date may exist for each account
>   * Report-date is today.
>   * Start/End Dates (from options, but we want to avoid them)
>
> The property exist per transaction in account:
>
>   * Reconciliation status - (n) unreconciled (c) cleared (y) reconciled
>
> To ease understanding I've created branch maint-bugfixes-reconciling
> which creates the following header, so, please check the headers and
> let me know which column must be kept. It may be easier to test on a
> very short datafile, max 20 transactions per account.
>
> Illustration: https://imgur.com/a/uYNnrhS - columns as follows
>
>   * account-full-name
>   * last-reconcile-date
>   * all unreconciled until last-reconcile-date
>   * all unreconciled until today
>   * all unreconciled & cleared until last-reconcile-date
>   * all unreconciled & cleared until today
>   * all reconciled until last-reconcile-date
>   * all reconciled until today
>   * all unreconciled & cleared & reconciled until last-reconcile-date
>   * all unreconciled & cleared & reconciled until today
>
I didn't see the start/end dates on the options for this report.  I know
it is there for the general transaction report.  I agree, I think we can
ignore those at this time.  I looked at your illustration and pulled up
my copy of the test file.  Looks like you applied the reconciliation
steps as documented in the last email.

From your terminology, I presume that "all unreconciled" does not
include "cleared".  So that "all reconciled" + "all unreconciled" + "all
cleared" = TOTAL

In my mind, cleared are also unreconciled.  So, attempting to adopt the
three states:

Keep:

  * account-full-name
  * last-reconcile-date
  * all reconciled until last-reconcile-date   -->  Beginning Bank
    Balance   NOTE:  Not including Reconciled _on_ last-reconcile-date
  * all reconciled until today  --> Ending Bank
    Balance                             NOTE:  Change "until" to "thru"
  * all unreconciled & cleared until today   --> Current
    Outstanding          NOTE:  Change "until" to "thru"
  * all unreconciled & cleared & reconciled until today --> Check
    Register as of today.  NOTE:  ditto

Add (between Beginning Bank Balance and Ending Bank Balance):

  * all reconciled on last-reconcile-date                      NOTE: 
    Should be Ending Bank Balance - Beginning Bank Balance


Now, my wife says she prefers "today" to be "last-reconcile-date" in
that she didn't usually want to see transactions after the end of the
bank statement.  I, on the other hand, prefer to see everything in the
check register (which should be in GnC) so I know that the math in the
check register is correct.

David Cousens, can you chime in here and give us your opinion?  I think
you were an accountant in a previous career.

--Steve