Reconciliation [Proposed Change]

[Derek Atkins]

Quoting lingwitt at bellsouth.net:

>
> On 11 Sep 2007, at 8:05:23 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>
>> Gnucash doesn't store any balances.  It computes all balances on the
>> fly.  So there's no easy way to store an intermediary balance-as-of
>> date for many many dates.
>
> Can't you just scan a selection of transactions and calculate the total
> change?

That would give you the delta, but not the opening balance.  How would
you compute the OPENING balance for a particular "start date"?  Right
now it's easy; it runs over all the reconciled transactions and the sum
is your reconciled balance.  That works because you're always reconciling
from the start-of-time.

But in YOUR proposal there's no way to compute the starting balances at
all, because the reconciled periods may be non-contiguous.  How do you
handle the start-date when there are non-contiguous pieces prior to
the "current" reconciliation period?  You can't just take the sum of
all reconciled transactions, because the starting sum on your statement
takes them ALL into account whereas gnucash only knows of a subset of them.
Oops!

You also an't just assume that everything dated prior to the start date
has been reconciled.  I've got a few transactions that are months old
that haven't cleared yet.

Also, your suggestion would make the reconciliation process more challenging,
because NOW if I go back in time I have to look in BOTH directions.
Let's say you've got the following periods reconciled:  T0-T1, T2-T3, and
T4-T5.  If I go back and reconcile T3-T4, I now have to make sure that
the starting AND ending balances in THIS reconciliation match the values
entered/computed in the previous two reconciliations.   Blah!  What a
pain in the patooee!

But as I said before, you're still welcome to submit a patch.

Enjoy!

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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