Automated reconciliation with GnuCash

[Neil Williams]

On Saturday 13 November 2004 9:12 pm, Gabriel M. Beddingfield wrote:
> Is there a way to automate the sorting and matching when reconciling a bank
> statement?

No. Just click on the reconcile column in the register window and change the 
'n' to 'c' - these will show up as already ticked in the reconcile window, 
but you are still needed to identify which transaction matches which line of 
the statement.

> Something that compares my register with a bank statement (e.g. 
> in QIF format)?

GnuCash only supports QIF for importing new data currently. You'd need to add 
the logic to compare the QIF data with existing data and match the bank's 
description of the transaction with your description - a job that would be 
better done in QOF (using C) rather than in an import format. Unless you 
faithfully input every part of the description (including details like the 
location of the ATM that some banks include in the statement), GnuCash would 
need to ask you which ones match anyway. That's what reconcile does - it asks 
you to match the description you entered into GnuCash with the description 
provided by the bank.

If you import the data from QIF in the first place, what kind of check is it 
if you receconcile against the same QIF file??

> Something that matches up all the easy-to-match up 

?? That is a sweeping generalisation that is very hard to achieve in practice. 
What you consider easy to match does not translate well into code. You can't 
rely on the date of entry, you can't rely on matching the description and the 
statement contains no data about which accounts were debited or credited by 
the transaction - it doesn't necessarily contain a unique reference to the 
account listed in the statement that can be matched with GnuCash data. So you 
are left with checking by the amount. Hardly a reliable method.

> Currently, I use the reconciliation application to reconcile GnuCash with a
> paper bank statement.  However, I can download my bank statement in a QIF
> file.

You can import the QIF but you still need to reconcile the data from the 
import - it's an essential bit of maintenance and user involvement - you need 
to rely on this data, it's worth checking it's correct rather than trusting 
completely in some algorithm.

-- 

Neil Williams
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