creditcard reconciliation impossible

[Wouter van Marle]

Dear Guus,

All you have to do is create a dedicated "credit card" account (type:
credit card) for each and every credit card you have, then you can there
enter your credit card payments (and tick them off when your statement
arrives) and separately you make a monthly payment from your bank
account to your credit card account.

So you get the following tree:
+-+ Assets (type: assets)
| +- Bank (type: bank)
| +- Credit card (type: credit card)
+- Expenses

Book credit card expenses in the credit card account against your
expenses account, and then the monthly payment from bank to credit card
account.

I'm sure it's also explained in the documentation by the way.

Wouter.


On Fri, 2006-06-23 at 06:33 +0200, A.J. Bonnema wrote:
> HI all,
> 
> I am a first time user of gnucash and have encountered a problem that 
> you guys (and gals) may have solved gracefully. I will give you the data 
> first followed by the problem description.
> 
> == Data ===
> 
> In words I get into trouble because the credit card company issues a 
> statement over a month and then waits about a week before obtaining the 
> payment from my bank. In the meantime the next period starts and I might 
> have payed other amount with the credit card.
> 
> I depict the situation in a schema:
> 
> x1--------------S1     P1
>                     x2--------------S2     P2
> 
> Transfer P1 cannot be reconciled
> 
> x1 = start of credit card payments
>       for period 1 (about a month)
>       that is when I first pay using
>       the credit card.
> 
> S1 = date of statement from the credit card company
>       for period 1
> 
> P1 = date of payment by my bank to the creditcard company
>       for period 1
>       remark: this payment is automatic and generated by
>               the creditcard company about a week
>               later than the statement (S1)
> 
> x2 = start of credit card
>       for period 1 (about a month)
>       that is when I first pay using
>       the credit card.
> 
> S2 = date of statement from the credit card company
>       for period 2
> 
> P2 = date of payment by my bank to the creditcard company
>       for period 2
> 
> Remark:
> x1 < S1 < x2 < P1
> sum of amounts from x1 to S1 is equal to amount of P1.
> P1 is a transfer of money from my checking account to the credit card 
> company account.
> 
> == Problem description ==
> Because I entered these data later, it is impossible to reconcile the 
> statement from the creditcard company.
> 
> What I *can* reconcile are the amounts from x1 to S1 and GNUCash 
> automagically generates a transferdialog, which I have to cancel, 
> because I know it is being payed automatically.
> 
> What I *cannot* reconcile is the amount payed on date P1, because the 
> amount x2 starts before P1.
> 
> Even if I lie about the date of the creditcard statement, and say I 
> received it on date P1 in stead of S1, I have an imbalance, because the 
> creditcard payment x2 is in between.
> 
> == my idea of a solution ==
> The only solution I see, is having a fake account that "loans" the money 
> to the credit card company until the payment is received and then gets 
> it back from the credit card account.
> 
> I find it is not a nice solution but I see no other solution.
> 
> Any one of you guys have a better solution? Maybe GNUCash has some 
> standard solution, because many credit card companies (at least in 
> Holland) work this way?
> 
> Guus.