How to account interest rate

[Dmitry V'yal]

Mike Leone wrote:
> Robin Chattopadhyay had this to say:
>> I think even if there were a BalanceAsOfDate() function, one would be 
>> easily
>> frustrated using it to calculate the interest earned on a bank 
>> account. Most
>> banks (in the U.S., anyway) accrue interest daily and compound monthly. 
> 
> And change every few months lately, usually downward. In 12 months, my 
> ING Direct account went from 2.0% to 1.3%. An average of -0.1% every 
> couple months or so. And so the SX transaction would also need to be 
> changed. And usually you find out that the rate has been lowered only 
> when the next scheduled interest payment is lower than you expect it to 
> be ...
> 
>> So, in order to calculate the interest correctly, you need to know the 
>> balance
>> of the account for each day of the period. The dates for your 
>> transactions
>> in GnuCash would have to exactly match the transaction dates that the 
>> bank
>> used to post the same transaction. For a transactional account (like
>> checking or N.O.W. account), this would quickly become impractical.
> 
> Simpler just to make an entry on your own, whenever you earn the interest.
> 
Many thanks to all for clarifications. Now my original idea no longer 
seems so attractive to me. Manually entering data is definitely simpler 
than correctly handling all that nuances.