Delays in transfers between accounts

[Andrew Sackville-West]

On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 08:14:06PM +0200, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Hi Fred,
> 
> Fred Bone wrote:
> > Maybe this issue only affects UK accounts (though somehow I doubt it).
> 
> I've seen it in Canada and the UK. Fear not, there is a solution.
> 
> > If I transfer money from my savings account with one financial 
> > institution to my current ("checking") account with another, the transfer 
> > takes three or four working days. For example, a transfer which shows on 
> > my savings account statement as dated 3 April shows on my current account 
> > statement dated 10 April (two bank holidays and a weekend in between: bad 
> > timing on my part!)
> 
> And if you do international transfers the delay is even longer :-)
> 
> I suggest you create a 'Transit' account under Assets:Bank. You would do 
> two transactions:
> 
> April  3: Bank A -> Transit
> April 10: Transit -> Bank B
> 
> Now your GnuCash accounts will both match your bank statements.

I'm not sure why this is an issue. If I write a check on July 7, and
mail it to my vendor, my register will show the check dated july 7,
but my statement will show the check clearing at some later date. This is
perfectly normal and apparently acceptable. So why does it matter if
the transfer shows different dates, just like a check? 

The state of the transaction is shown by the cleared states of the
both ends. If one end has cleared, but not the other, then the
transaction is still being processed, regardless of what the dates in
the register are. 

seems like a lot of work to me for something that is pretty simple to
understand, and also very acceptable in the only-slightly-different
context of a check instead of a transfer.

.02

A
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