Should I reconcile transactions?

[Maf. King]

On Saturday 23 June 2007 22:34, Daniel wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Should I reconcile transactions? I haven't reconciled any of my
> transactions because I might make a change later. I'm still learning
> GnuCash and sometimes I re-organize my accounts, or put transactions in
> different accounts.
>
> What is the benefit of reconciling a transaction? Does reconciling mean
> that I can no longer edit the transaction?
>
> Let me give an example. Yesterday I had the following expense accounts:
> - Groceries
> - Home & Office
>
> Today I decided to replace those by:
> - Living Expenses
> - Work Expenses
>
> Some of the transactions that went into "Home & Office" where moved to a
> different account. Would I have been able to do this if the transaction
> had been reconciled? My understanding is that this wouldn't have been
> possible.
>
> I'd welcome any advice. I'm just trying to learn the optimal way to use
> GnuCash.
>
Hi Daniel,

Reconciling is the process where you check that you and some other 
organisation (ie Bank, Credit Credit Card Co) agree with each other.

So, the bank send you a statement, and through the reconcile process, you get 
to check that they haven't debited your account twice, or for the wrong 
amount etc., (and I tend to find that the mistakes are all mine...)

Reconciling your own expense accounts doesn't really make sense, as you don't 
have any form of external "audit" trail to compare with.

Note, once you have reconciled against your bank statement, you are very 
unlikely to move that transaction - whilst you may re-assign the expense 
account side as often as you like, you won't suddenly decide that you should 
have entered it  using a credit card account, rather than checking, for 
example.

Hope that makes sense.

Maf.