[GNC-dev] About 3.9 and reconciliation balances

[David Cousens]

I was not aware that AQbanking does a reconcile on the fly.  I also use OFX,
CSV nad very occasionally QIF imports (but not from Quicken) but not that
heavily any more. I think it would be useful to have this information about
the reconcile marking process documented at least in the importing section
of the help manual. There are sections on reconciliation in several sections
of the guide and the help manual. I suspect it is covered but there isn't a
nice summary. 

I don't know enough about how AQbanking works at the bank level, e.g.
whether it only makes transactions available after all bank internal
processes (clearing) have occurred as my bank hasn't implemented it and
refuses to on security grounds (but it does allow MYOB and a number of other
commercial packages direct server access but only on business accounts not
personal accounts -  no doubt for a hefty fee) but it is clearly regarded as
the equivalent of a statement. 

In my manual OFX downloads for my credit card, the bank records transactions
as pending in their web portal, which I have made, but are not yet cleared
through VISA, until they get a clearnce from VISA. I can't include the
pending transactions in either a CSV or OFX download which makes sense. The
shortened times for electronic clearance between banks these days usually
means that i have had no conflicts between downloads and statements for
several years now unless I have had finger trouble in importing. On my
Savings account I can't remember having had a transaction marked as pending
since electronic clearing came in.

I will put it on my to do list to find an appropraite places to put such a
summary. I tried to rationalize the Guide recently by having a general
section Ch4 on reconciliation and then pointing to the existing sections
which were focussed on reconciling specific account types.

It makes sense to me to store the last reconciliation date and the ending
balance at that date in the account data then by comparison with
calculations of the starting balance on the fly, there would be a good
mechanism for detecting any altered transaction splits invalidating a
previous reconciliation and alert the user. Even more useful perhaps than
just the last reconciliation date and end  balance would be a complete
reconciliation history for each account but that introduces alot more
complications for forward/backward compatability but it would improve the
ability to verify account integrity and to locate when a change affecting
the account integrity was introduced. 

By "fix" in this context are you referring to the exclusion of the future
reconciliation dates from the starting balance sums  or a manual or auto fix
to the future reconciliation dates themselves.

I am still trying to work out if an autofix is possible for the future
reconciliation dates case. It may be possible from the transaction dates
posted and dates entered for splits which have a future reconciliation date
to identify a potentially valid reconciliation date if you were also able to
construct a list of all reconciliation dates used by the account which was
what i did manually i.e. suggest the earliest and latest reconciliation
dates a user could choose to be consistent with the rest of the account
data. The same approach may also be the basis of an internal check on the
stored reconciliation data validity. 

David 



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David Cousens
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