Delays in transfers between accounts

[Fred Bone]

On 6 Jul 2007 at 20:14, Daniel Carrera said:

> 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.

Thanks. This is just what I am doing (except I put "Money in Transit" 
under "Suspense", together with the automatically-created "Imbalance-GBP" 
and "Orphan-GBP"). The (minor) problem with this is the lack of any 
visible link between the two, other than both being for the same amount. 
Perhaps I'm expecting too much.

> As a side-note: This can get funny when you do a cheque deposit into "Bank
> B" and the amount gets added before the cheque has cleared from the "Bank
> A". While you wait for the cheque to clear the Transit account has a
> negative balance :-)

This is, of course, exactly what happens when purchasing shares, during 
the 3-day settlement time. The broker shows my shares as purchased on, 
say, May 22, but the debit to my cash account is shown on May 25.