Transactions with split dates

[Michael Hendry]

On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 04:39 -0700, Ian K wrote:
> The issue would arise when funds leave one account on a certain day, but do
> not arrive at the destination account until a later date. E.g. the UK BACS
> process can take 3 days during which the funds have left the source account
> and do not arrive into the destination account.
> In GnuCash one solution would be to create a dummy 'Transit' account then
> wash the transactions through that.
> For example, transferring £1000 from Bank A to Bank B through a Transit
> account could look like this:
> 
> 05-May, Bank A -£1000, Transit +£1000
> 07-May, Bank B +£1000, Transit -£1000
> 
> That way the funds can be shown to be 'in transit' between two accounts.
> It's not ideal - there are extra transactions to create, and it might become
> confusing to match the sides of the transactions if there are many different
> accounts using the transit account. This could be solved by creating more
> transit accounts of course...

I can see what you're trying to achieve, but I'm not sure _why_ you're
trying to achieve it!

I can see that you might wish to avoid spending money from an account
which was the destination of a transfer which wasn't actually going to
take place for a few days (Bank B, to use your example), but if you're
aiming to ensure that the reconciliation of your Bank A => Bank B
transaction has an exact date-match between Bank B's statement and your
GNUCash transaction I think you're giving yourself unnecessary stress!

To go back to my example of a cheque payment - do you adjust the date of
the posting in GNUCash when you come to reconcile this transaction with
the bank statement?

Michael