Reconciling w/o statement???

[Derek Atkins]

"Jack McKinney" <jackmc-gnucash at lorentz.com> writes:

>     I never open my bank statement.  I have no need to.  Everyday, I
> go to my bank's web site to check what has cleared and mark them off.
>     For the last couple of years I have been using my own web-based
> accounting system to manage my books.  I recently decided to try GnuCash
> again, and am finding myself about to give up and go back to my web
> system.
>    In my system, I show two balances for my bank accounts: the cleared
> balance and the current balance.  The cleared balance only includes
> entries which have been marked as cleared.

Gnucash has a "cleared balance" -- take a look at the top of the
register when you open the account.  You will see a bunch of
totals (one of which is cleared balance).

>    I cannot seem to find this balance anywhere in Gnucash.  If I open an
> account, and choose "reconcile", it offers me a chance to guess what the
> balance is supposed to be, after which it will presumably tell me if I
> am correct.  Since it also asks for a "statement date", I have a feeling
> it is going to do a lot more when I click "Go" than I want it to do on
> a daily basis.

Reconciling is meant to "reconcile to a statement".  It's different
than "clearing" which means "cleared the account".  You do not want to
run the reconcile window on a daily basis.  You can, however, mark
transactions "cleared" on a daily basis by clicking in the "recn"
column to change the "n" (not reconciled) to "c" (cleared).  The
reconcile window will allow you to change that to 'y' (yes,
reconciled) -- but that's a periodic function to match with
statements.

>    Further frustrating this is the fact that I keep no money in my
> "Cash in Checking" account in Gnucash.  Instead, all of the money is in
> subaccount of that account.  The sum of these subaccounts is the total
> balance in my bank account.  I use this indirection to manage budgeting.
> My subaccounts are "Car", "House", "Utilities", etc.  There is a "all
> subaccounts" checkbox in the reconcilation window, but again, I don't
> trust the black box.

Ahh, ye of little faith...

>    Actually, that is probably not what I mean to say.  I think it would
> be more accurate to say that I want a read-only way to reconcile my
> balance against the bank, and can only find a read-write way to do this
> in Gnucash.

Eh?!?  What do you mean "read only"?  I don't understand.

>    Is there a way to get Gnucash to tell me how much it thinks is in my
> bank account?

Yes -- the "cleared balance" on the top of your account window.

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available