Reconcilliation Woes

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 13 Apr 2005, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:

> gnc picks the balance for the date you have entered as the closing date for
> the statement. This number should always be changed to the closing balance
> from the bank statement itself, then as you check off items, you should
> come out to a 0 difference at the end.

   "Aha!," he said. I'll give this a try when April's statement arrives;
should be any day now.

> Aha! It looks to me like you are actually manually reconciling the
> statement to the register by essentially following the old p&p method thats
> probably printed on the back of your bank statement.

   "P&P"? Isn't that the famous Microsoft "plug-and-pray"?

   Yes, I always reconcile the paper register in the checkbook before turning
to gnucash. Heck, I've been doing this for decades now.

> I think it is something you are not doing correctly in terms of the
> reconciliation feature of gnucash, though you seem to be actually
> reconciling the account.

   Exactly why I asked for guidance in the first place. I Read The Fine Manual
but didn't see the answer there.

> Does that make sense? Seems you ARE reconciling the account, just
> circumventing the method provided by the software. If it works for you and
> keeps you from bouncing checks, then great. If you want to learn otherwise,
> then great. I'm guessing there's an FAQ on this or some docs already
> written (not at my desk to look), that can walk you through it. If not, we
> can go off list and create one as we go through it and then put it up for
> inclusion in the docs.

   If the problem was that I did not know what number to enter in the dialog
box, then that should be documented. I could not find this when I went
searching on the web site.

Many thanks,

Rich

-- 
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>   Voice: 503-667-4517   Fax: 503-667-8863