balancing gnucash against bank checking account

[BenoitGrégoire]

On Friday 29 August 2003 10:51, Jesse Guardiani wrote:
> Benoit Grégoire wrote:
> > On Tuesday 26 August 2003 15:29, Jesse Guardiani wrote:
> >> Howdy list,
> >>
> >> First, my setup: gnucash 1.8.3 on FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE
> >>
> >> I'm wondering if there is an easy way to view
> >> the unreconciled balance? Basically, is there a
> >> quick way to see the sum of my outstanding
> >> checks/debits/deposits?
> >
> > Open the account.  All the balance are in the summary bar.  the
> > unreconciled balance is labeled "Present".
>
> Perhaps that feature is broken in my version? My "Present"
> balance includes Unreconiled AND Cleared items. Or Perhaps
> the problem is that I haven't actually marked anything as
> reconciled at this point? All my "reconciled" data is set
> to "c".

We really should revisit the naming of these and documentation of those 
"balances".

Here as far as I can tell each what each one is:

"Present":  Current balance of the account.  Sum of all "normal", "cleared" 
and "reconciled splits".

"Cleared": Not really a balance as we usually understand it.  Sum of splits 
marked "cleared" only (reconciled splits not considered).  I'm not sure how 
usefull this is.  I think reconciled splits should be considered cleared as 
well.

"Reconciled":  The reconciled balance of the account.  Sum of all reconciled 
splits.

I don't know exactly how "Future" and "Projected Minimum" are calculated.

In your case, you want: "Present" - ("Cleared" + "Reconciled").  However note 
that what you usually want is to know how much money you can still spend.  
For that all you need is "Present".

I hope it's a little clearer.
-- 
Benoit Grégoire
http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/