Delays in transfers between accounts

[Daniel Carrera]

Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
>> 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.

We want the accounts in GnuCash to match the bank statements so that 
it's easy to verify that they are correct. Especially if there are 
additional transactions during the time period while the cheque is being 
cleared. If the dates don't correspond then transactions might end up in 
the wrong order. For example, it might look like your account had an 
overdraft that it never had.

> 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.

It might be that for your personal situation the exact date is not 
important. I do have some account pairs where I wouldn't care much, and 
if we are talking about sending a payment out to a vendor I am likely to 
care less. But when I am making large transfers with a 3-week delay and 
making several transactions during those three weeks, I do want to see 
that my account was never $3,000 over-draft, and I do want to see that 
the payments and deposits in the same order that they actually happened.

Considering how easy it is to keep track of transactions properly, I 
don't see any purpose in having a discrepancy between my GnuCash and my 
bank statements.

Daniel.