balancing gnucash against bank checking account

[David Hampton]

On Fri, 2003-08-29 at 10:23, Benoit Grégoire wrote:
> 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".

Correct with one caveat.  It doesn't include any transactions that occur
after the current day.  If I enter a transaction into the register and
date it for next week, it will not show up in the Present balance of the
account.

> "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.

Cleared means that you have some a priori knowledge that the check has
cleared the bank, but you haven't formally reconciled against a bank
statement.  It doesn't matter whether your knowledge is through looking
at an online bank statement, talking to a teller, or talking with a
psychic. :-)

> "Reconciled":  The reconciled balance of the account.  Sum of all reconciled 
> splits.
> 
> I don't know exactly how "Future" and "Projected Minimum" are calculated.

Future calculates the balance based upon all transactions in the
account; both those that have already happened and those that will
happen at a future date.  Projected Mimimum is a low water mark starting
from today's balance extending forward in time to the last transaction
in the account.  If you commonly schedule transactions *and* enter them
into the transaction register, this will let you see if those
transactions will overdraw the account so you can add money.

David

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