pending vs. cleared transactions

[Phil Longstaff]

On September 13, 2009 02:41:22 pm T. Howell-Cintron wrote:
> T. Howell-Cintron wrote:
>
> I know it's bad form to reply to your own message but after re-reading
> it I figured I could better put my question, as this:
>
> When dealing with your checking/debit account do you enter the contents
> of receipts immediately, and during reconciliation verify the expenses
> with your bank, or do you wait for your bank to clear the transaction
> and just assume it's reconciled at that point?
>
> (Please be gentle.. I'm new to GC, new to accounting, and it's a hard
> change to make when you're used to keeping your cash in your pillowcase)

As far as I am concerned, there is no right way or wrong way.  My practice: I 
enter receipts every Saturday for the previous week.  I then go onto my bank 
website , look through the transactions, and mark as cleared any new cleared 
transactions.  At the end of the month, when I get my statement, I reconcile 
the account to the statement before I clear any new transactions for the 
month.  This provides me with 1) current bank balance (what is cleared), 
balance from last statement (what is reconciled) and future balance (uncleared 
transactions).

I don't find a lot of benefit from being able to import transactions, since most 
of my transactions are either scheduled, or just repeats so that quick-fill 
will find an appropriate transaction I can adjust.

Phil