Split transactions

[Mike or Penny Novack]

John Layman wrote:

>I'm a cutover from MS Money, too.  In Money, there were two ways you could
>handle credit cards, and I used the same approach you apparently did --
>itemizing the detail in a split transaction once I received the bill.  This
>is a simple way to handle credit cards, but it has the downside of leaving
>expenses unrecorded until well after they are incurred.  In GNUCash, I've
>used the second approach (which you could also use in Money) of setting up
>individual accounts for each credit card.  I enter the transactions
>throughout the course of the month, and then reconcile the account when I
>receive the bill.  [You reconcile it just as you would a bank statement.]
>During reconciliation, I commonly find that I've lost receipts or failed to
>record Web transactions and so forth.  Fortunately, GNUCash handles changes
>in the register during reconciliation in a natural and flexible way, and it
>also provides something akin to the running total of amounts entered you
>mention.  One other benefit has been that unreconciled transactions are
>highlighted by their status, so it's fairly easy to identify and correct
>charges you may have entered  for the wrong card.
>
>  
>
You are confusing something here. Accounting doesn't have to be done in 
"real time".

One of the organizations for which I keep the books has a "business 
credit card" account and I often don't know about who used their credit 
cards, when, and for what until I see the statement combining all 
accounts. I may have to contact that person and ask "what did you get 
from vendor Y on thus and so date?" and can't ENTER that transaction 
until I get a reply (I won't necessarily know the right expense account 
unless by the vendor that is obvious; if an airline that was "travel" 
but if it was Wal-mart?). But the date on which I enter that transaction 
into the GnuCash books has NOTHING to do with the date of the 
transaction itself.

This isn't a "little folks" issue. I am retired from a few decades doing 
financial systems software from one of the world's largest financial. 
Our transaction processing systems with their feeds to "general ledger" 
were NOT running "real time".

Michael D Novack, FLMI