Cleared balance bug and corrected explanation (was: Re: balancing gnucash against bank checking account),

[BenoitGrégoire]

On Friday 29 August 2003 14:17, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 01:58:32PM -0400, Benoit Gr?goire was heard to 
remark:
> > On Friday 29 August 2003 14:14, Dale Alspach wrote:
> > > Cleared balance includes reconciled transactions.
> >
> > It sure didn't in the head branch when I checked.
>
> That's a bug.  If a transaction is reconciled, it must have cleared
> earlier.  How long has this been broken? If this is fixed, who is hurt?

I just updated CVS head a few minutes ago.  It's still there. It was 
introduced no later that july 25. 

I just checked, and this bug is NOT present in the stable release, so I am 
sending this corrected version of my previous message (including David's 
corrections).  David, can you elaborate on how "Future" is actually 
calculated vs "Projected Minimum"?

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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 to this day.   that do NOT have a 
date in the future.

"Future" calculates the balance based upon all transactions in the
accoun.  Sum of ALL "normal", "cleared" and "reconciled splits".  (Those that  
already happened and those that will happen at a future date).

"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.

"Projected Minimum" 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.

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

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