Delays in transfers between accounts

[Daniel Carrera]

Doug Laidlaw wrote:
> It occurred to me, that if you record checks only when they appear on your 
> statement, your cashbook balance will not allow for them and will be 
> artificially high.

Could you explain what you mean by this? Honestly, I did not follow your 
explanation at all. What is my cashbook balance? What is a cashbook?

> If it is a question of avoiding unintentional overdrafts, 

No. I said that I want my GnuCash account balances to show the money 
that I actually had available in the account. I don't want GnuCash to 
say that on March 15 I had $1800 when in reality I had $4600 and I don't 
want it to say that on February 12 I had $7000 when in reality I had 
$200. I want the bank balances to be accurate. I gave the example of an 
over-draft in the sense that I don't want GnuCash to say that on a 
certain date I had an over-draft of $2000 when in reality my bank 
balance was perfectly positive. I have no idea why you think this has 
anything to do with avoiding real-life overdrafts. I know how much money 
I have available at each time and it's not hard to not spend more money 
than I have in the bank. Why would I need GnuCash to avoid spending more 
money than I have in the bank?

> It was 
> the office accountant's fault for not clearing the cheque first.  If the 
> client's cheque had not been recorded in the ledger, that could have happened 
> more easily and more frequently.

Recording a deposit when the money is actually available would prevent, 
rather than promote this type of error. It seems wrong to record in 
GnuCash that I have an additional $2,000 in my account before I actually 
have that money there. Since you are keen on preventing over-drafts 
(I've never had problems with over-drafts), using a transit account to 
record money that has left one account (e.g. on an electronic transfer) 
but is not yet available in the destination account seems like a very 
good idea.

Daniel.