Budgeting with Accounts Payable and then reconciling

[Jack McKinney]

--huq684BweRXVnRxX
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline

     I have created a bank account for my bank account and an income account
for my employer.  When I get my paycheck, I transfer the money from the
income account to my bank account.  I almost never open my monthly statement
anymore... My bank has online review of my account, so I can daily update
my entries (marking them as cleared), and then comparing my cleared balance
with the daily balance.  So far, no misses (unless I forgot a transaction).
     I have also started implementing some subaccounts to my bank account
to allow budgetting.  I have created an account called "Accounts Payable"
which is a subaccount of my bank account (not sure if I am using the term
"Accounts Payable correctly here, but hear with me).  Under this account,
I create subaccounts for all of my recurring bills (Auto insurance, rent,
etc.).
     Now, every paycheck I get (twice a month), I transfer the money from
my income account to my bank account.  Then, I transfer appropriate portions
of my bills to the AP accounts.  For example, I pay rent once a month, so I
transfer half of my rent to my "Accounts Payable.Rent" subaccount.  My auto
insurance is paid every 6 months, so I transfer 1/12th of the bill into that
account.
     So, until I actually pay bills, the money is in my bank account, as
indicated by the total on the account, but I also see how much is in the
top level account so that I know how much I still have (i.e., not already
budgetted).
     Then, when my rent is due, the rent is transferred from the subaccount
for rent instead of the main account.
     Well, it took some time before I could actually start using all of this.
For example, instead of transferring my rent money from Bank to Bank.AP.Rent,
and then paying the rent out of that account, I simply paid the rent, and
then transfered an additional half of the rent into the account.  This made
me strapped for cash for almost a month, but it is worth it since I am now
ahead on my bills.
     During this transition time, I never had a problem.  Well, today is the
first day that I entered payments _from_ the AP accounts.  Here is the
problem: If I open my top level account, it shows my balance and my cleared
balance.  The balance shows how much money is left over after I have entered
all of my cleared and uncleared transactions and transfered money to my APs.
My cleared balance only shows the balance of what has cleared in this account
(ignoring subaccounts).
     So, the balance is way under the number my bank gives me, because it
includes transactions that haven't cleared, yet.  The Cleared amount is way
over because it does not include moneys transferred to the AP accounts.
     In fact, if I write down my cleared amount from the main account, and
then enter each of the subaccount and write down the cleared amount there
(which is negative because the only bank transactions in these accounts are
the actual payments), and then add them together, I get the true cleared
amount, which matches my bank.
     I am doing this wrong, or is their an option to get gnucash to display
the cleared amounts in the current account and all subaccounts of the current
account?  I am using GnuCash 1.4.8.

--
"I'm walking home from school, and I'm watching        Jack McKinney
some men building a new house, and the guy             jackmc@lorentz.com
hammering on the roof calls me a paranoid little       http://www.lorentz.com
weirdo....                  in Morse code."            1024D/D68F2C07 4096g/38AEF076
    -Emo Philips

--huq684BweRXVnRxX
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iEYEARECAAYFAjqsExEACgkQimeon9aPLAd4fgCfeGzVCgNJvCrjYn3PObOJTm0A
SeMAnixI3jkvIFFjOsOZwfF+n7HLRvdk
=iJTx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--huq684BweRXVnRxX--