Delays in transfers between accounts

[Andrew Sackville-West]

On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 11:22:17PM +0200, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> >> If I enter a deposit for August 12 when the money was really 
> >> available on September 20 and I make a large payment on September 29 
> >> GnuCash will indeed show an overdraft that was never there.
> > 
> > ? I'm assuming you made a typo there, otherwise, how could money
> > available on Sept 20 show as an overdraft if you make the large
> > payment 9 days later? 
> 
> No typo. And that's precisely the point. Of course there is no overdraft 
> and GnuCash should not make it look like there was. Here is a more 
> detailed example:
> 
> - I have two bank accounts: A and B.
> 
> - Suppose that I deposit a cheque on bank B, based on the account in 
> bank A. In other words, I'm transferring money from A to B.
> 
> - The money becomes available on Sep 20 in bank B.
> 
> - On Sep 29 I use that money to make a payment.
> 
> - On bank A the initial cheque withdrawal only shows up in August 5.
> 
> 
> If I represent this as a single transaction in GnuCash and use the 
> latter date (August 5) it will look like my account was over-draft on 
> Sep 29 when in reality it was just fine.

see this is where I'm confused. August 5 happens before Sep 29, in
most years... but obviously we're confusing ourselves here so moving
on...

> 
> This is merely an example of how using a single transaction can make 
> GnuCash show an incorrect balance. Sure, I could use Sep 20 as the 
> transaction date, but that just means that GnuCash will display a 
> balance on bank A that doesn't match the bank statement.
> 
> > regardless, my original point was that there is more than one way to
> > do things. If it matters to you that the dates match up on both ends,
> > then its perfectly acceptable to use a "suspense" or "in-transit"
> > account to keep track of things, but its more work.
> 
> That is a statement I can agree with. I'm sure that there are many cases 
> where a Transit account would be a bad idea and it's better to make a 
> single transaction (on Sep 20 I guess) and let the statement disagree 
> with bank A.
> 
> Your system is sound and seems to work well for your situation. And I'm 
> sure that your situation is more typical than mine.

actually, I'm sure min eis not typical, but it works for me... as your
"Transit account" will surely do what you need.

> 
> I am unusual in that my most important transactions have a significant 
> time delay. I get money in the UK which I transfer to Canada and Germany 
> and I have to deal with 3-4 week delays which could really throw my 
> accounts out of whack.

then by all means, use the transit account. it actually accurately
reflects reality as the money is "in transit" during that time. 

> 
> > sorry if we headed off down the wrong path.
> 
> Yeah, sorry I got impatient a couple of times.

:)

A
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